30 years ago, a large percentage of the programmers out there were writing what was basically spreadsheet code. Some manager needed some information, and that meant a programmer had to write a program to read data, generate reports, and add them to the daily jobs. Then came spreadsheets, and the manager could do that work instead. The programmer was out of a job...
Well, no. Instead, he worked on more sophisticated analyses, software that didn't fit in Visicalc or Lotus 1-2-3.
Time after time over the decades there's been predictions that some new productivity tool was going to replace programmers. It hasn't happened. Because what a programmer does, basically, is to do the things that people havethought up that haven't yet become popular enough or common enough to be canned in a tool.
The advent of the Codeless Development Environment
If what you're doing doesn't involve code, it's not development, it's configuration. And that's great, because having programmers wasting time on configuration is a drag on productivity. Anything you already know how to do, that you've already written code to do, you don't do it again. If you do, well, that's a problem you need to fix, write a program to do it, go on to something else...
Do I know what how? What is it I said that you're upset about?
Given the site you're referncing, I assume you don't think I'm being outrageous in claiming that Cheney's actually human (yes, yes, I know about the jokes) or that Bush's National Guard service is being blown completely out of proportion? Is that a fair assumption?
So...
What claim did I actually make? I didn't say that Kerry did a good job, or that he didn't do a good job. I didn't say that he deserved his medals, or that he didn't deserve his medals. I didn't say anything about what he actually did on the swift boats.
What I actually said was: "Whether Kerry exaggerated his role or not, it's a fact that he asked to go to Vietnam, and he volunteered for hazardous duty."
What are you objecting to?
That Kerry might or might not have exaggerated his role? That Kerry asked to go to Vietnam? That Kerry volunteered for hazardous duty?
Please connect the dots for me, I'm all ears. Honest, but I can't make out what you're trying to bring to my attention without more context, thanks.
Finally, a PC that costs more than a Mac!
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Hip-e All-In-One PC
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· Score: 1
Finally someone has built a PC that costs more than a Mac and actually has worse specs than the Mac! I wouldn't have thought it possible!
Look, Stewart's show isn't about tough questions. It's about cracking jokes and having fun. That's his job there. If he started asking any politician tough questions he'd be out on his ass, sooner or later. It's comedy. It's not supposed to be real. It's like complaining that Readers Digest "Humor in Uniform" doesn't get into the realities of the war in Iraq, or that "Spy vs Spy" isn't as detailed as "Smiley's People".
His point, which nobody addressed, is that there's all this time and energy wasted on crap that is just irrelevant. What was most of that transcript about? Dick Cheney's daughter is a lesbian, and he seems to have mixed feelings about it. Well, geeze, is anyone surprised? You gotta expect he's going to be touchy about it sometimes, and able to deal with it other times. He's human.
Or let's look at the National Guard. The spin that's going on there is crazy. There's no reason to attack Bush about his service in the National Guard... we know that he had a troubled youth, with a lot of irresponsible behaviour. You either accept that he grew out of it, or you don't. You look for signs that he's learned from his mistakes... in fact that's something that's worth asking: what did he learn from that time. I'd like to know that.
Or the whole Swift Boat melodrama. Whether Kerry exaggerated his role or not, it's a fact that he asked to go to Vietnam, and he volunteered for hazardous duty. If it turns out that he wasn't as courageous as he wants you to think, if his motivations were mixed, he still had more backbone than someone who took a slot in the National Guard.
I could go on and on, but Stewart's right, the media is asking stupid questions and letting the candidates deflect them into concentrating on stupid issues far far too often... and paying attention to real problems far too infrequently. Really, they should ignore what either candidate says about the other. Treat is as a "hot tip" for something to investigate, at the most. They should ignore anything the candidate says about their own character... of course they're going to try and say good things about themselves. Instead, look for the things the candidates aren't talking about or what they're talking about they aren't explaining. Because that's where the real skeletons are going to be buried.
Not only is this old, but it was old news back when I first started using computers with hard disks... the only difference is the mechanism you use to get a kernel booted from another device.
The main advantage to a big screen, like the 1400x1050 15" screen on the Thinkpad, is you don't need to worry about virtual desktops and window shading... there's plenty of space to work in. Two screens is even better.
Screens are one of Apple's problems ever since Jobs came back. The later Beige screens were nice, high resolution Trinitron displays... but the LCDs are annoying low-res, and the eMac's tube is awful. I have a $170 CTX CRT with a Trinitron-clone tube that handles 1600x1200 nicely.
Without adding third-party commercial software it won't do a fraction of what any linux distro does out of the box
On the other hand it has a well designed GUI that is, if not quite as good as Windows', by far the most consistent desktop you can get. Compare that to Linux, where every application has a different GUI, just about, and some of them are truly awful.
Desktop Manager is a nice idea, but it's alpha, and every time I've tried to use it it doesn't work.
I guess that's one of those "your milage may vary" things, because it works fine for me. What it does is hook into the functionality Apple provides out of the box... but neglects to provide a GUI for. I only use it when I'm on a small screen, though... anything under 1280x1024. I'd like some better decluttering tools (more below), but they don't exist on Linux either.
Out of the box Aqua doesn't even have window shading, for christs sake!
I don't like window shading all that much. I use Windowmaker on X11 by preference, but rarely use windowshading there either. With a large enough physical desktop, a couple of virtuals, and iconification... much less clutter than a bunch of title bars floating around in inconvenient places.
I'd really like to see a more 3d desktop, like Expose' in real time... with lesser used windows fading into the background as new windows are created until they hit the side and iconify.
And as to running an X-server under Aqua, it doesn't seem to work nearly as well as it should.
Which server are you using? I've got a piss-poor Mac, and X11 apps are often more responsive than Aqua ones, once I turn off Quartz Extreme (which duplicates the X11 bitmaps in the GPU, and thus increases copying overhead and memory use).
I can't stand using KDE or Gnome on my PC, Windowmaker's great, but any of the "desktop style" environments suck up too many computrons.
But, listening to what you want, I don't see why you wouldn't just grab a PowerMac.
That's an easy one: Because I can't afford to spend $2000 on a computer. That's a $1500 premium over the x86-based box that would satisfy my requirements.
But the iBook will be lighter, and the battery will last longer.
I'll debate the battery some other time, but for the former, that just means that particular premium is worth it for you, it's not for me, and again I can't buy a Mac without it.
I wouldn't want any higher resolution - it would be a waste
Have you tried it? Apple used to make a laptop with higher resolution than typical, and people didn't go "oh, we don't need that resolution", they went, "oh, it's jewel-like".
I'd definately prefer to throw Linux on it.
OS X will do anything that I know of that Linux can do on a laptop, and it does it with better display drivers. I mean anything: If you want a window manager with virtual desktops, you can run Desktops Manager on Aqua, or you can simply install and run the same X11-based software you'd be running on Linux.
I never got to use an Alpha, but it was my understanding that what killed them was simply economy of scale.
Yeh, Intel's economy of scale gave them the resources to put enough pressure on Compaq to kill them.
As the market tightens, reputation becomes more important. On way to get a reputation as a good designer or coder is to release some well-designed open-source code, no?
I believe most of the folks using WinNT Alpha had source for their core applications (which allowed for an easy migration to Linux years later)
Yeh, that's us.
Except it wasn't "years later". Once you're committed to porting your applications, why stay on Windows? The only advantage to staying there is because you depend on commercial Windows applications or middleware, and that was all intel Even the third party Alpha apps there were dried up in no time. Once you've jumped it becomes a LOT easier to port open source apps to any of the other operating systems on the Alpha... the application base becomes a disadvantage.
It doesn't? I'm baffled at how you've come to that conclusion. I think there is a strong implication.
I don't, because I've talked to too many people who use the GPL simply because they see it as the default license for free software. I don't, because I've talked to people who don't care and it's "good enough". Because I've talked to people who decided it solves some problem they need solving. People who saw someone else use it. People who thought they had to. I've had people who used the GPL and when I asked them for a copy of the source they said "Oh, I didn't know it meant that! Thanks, I'll fix that right now."
There are all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with the GNU manifesto.
You can't tell anything about what someone's beliefs are based on the use of the GPL. You can only tell what their beliefs are by reading what they write about their beliefs.
Linux wrote about why he used the GPL. You quoted it, and what you quoted doesn't say "I beleieve in the principles of the FSF", it says "The GPL solved a problem that I needed solving". Back then the GPL was the only widely used license that solved that problem. There's lots more, now.
Though GNU has had to fight against the incorporation of Free Software in proprietary systems in order to advance the cause, it's not the founding principle.
It absolutely is. Not only was the GNU Manifesto created as a direct result of exactly that, but the only difference between the GPL and other licenses, is that it doesn't allow proprietary forks. If not for that, there would be no reason for the GPL to exist, and there would have been no motivation for creating it.
Stallman borrowed copiously from Gosling's innovations. Although Gosling had put GOSMACS under copyright and had sold the rights to UniPress, a privately held software company, Stallman cited the assurances of a fellow developer who had participated in the early MOCKLISP interpreter. According to the developer, Gosling, while a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon, had assured early collaborators that their work would remain accessible. When UniPress caught wind of Stallman's project, however, the company threatened to enforce the copyright. Once again, Stallman faced the prospect of building from the ground up. -- "A Stark Moral Choice"
Finally: The only "evidence" I hear from you is that, "I'm okay with using the BSD license, and having my Free Software converted into proprietary software, so Linus must be okay with that idea too."
I never said any such thing. You made a claim about Linus' motives. The points made in support of your claim included an assertion that believing in Free Software was equivalent to believing in the GNU form of Free Software. The only reason for that anecdote is to demonstrate that this specific point is not true. THAT IS ALL.
Anything else you want to infer from that, including such absurd comments at the one quoted above, is something happening in your head. I didn't say any such thing.
if it can be shown that the Segway is largely used by disabled/mobility-impaired people, bad things could happen to Segway LLC
What about them building something like the recently slashdotted Segway RV concept model, something that was at the same time more practical than the bizarre and dangerous Segway? Such a device could easily compete with the overregulated and overpriced Ibot, so it sounds like they're in a bit of a bind. Anything that makes the Segway more practical could open them up to landshark attacks.
The obvious answer is that if the XBox isn't running the same processor as desktop PCs then people won't be able so easily to hack their XBox and use it as a cheap PC subsidised by Microsoft without Microsoft getting their money back on game licenses.
Sorry, I mean "Windows has come to Itanium, who's switched"?
Think about it. Intel has spent YEARS pushing the Itanium architecture harder than anyone could possibly afford to spend pushing PPC. HP's Itanium boxes are finally getting to the point where the idea of them taking over from Alpha and Precision Architecture on UNIX servers isn't actually insane. How much impact are they making on the desktop, after all those years of aggressive promotion?
They've been so unsuccessful even getting people to think seriously about it that AMD's been able to steal a march on intel with a 64-bit extension to the x86 architecture.
Windows and the x86 are siamese twins. The only way to get people to switch from the x86 is if you can get an OS, chip, and emulation architecture that lets you run x86 code faster than the real x86, cheaper than the real x86, and cooler than the real x86... and if you do that, you'll sell it as a new implementation of the x86, as Intel, AMD, and everyone else who's built an x86 on a RISC/VLIW core has already done.
on the SERVER, there was hardly anything you couldn't get
Of course if you were running an Alpha as a server, you probably were running VMS or Tru64, because these operating systems were designed for that environment. The only reason we ever ran Oracle on Windows, for example, was because Oracle's prices were so much lower on Windows... it was purely a pricing decision that we could make when performance wasn't a major issue. And on pure price, NT/Alpha was never in the running.
As for the pure-Windows environment, the main advantage there (the only advantage Microsoft promotes that I can agree with, actually) is that you're doing everything on one platform. I can't see how having a few Alpha boxes for heavy lifting would be a win: you end up with multiple platforms (hardware now, as well as software to a lesser extent) and very little advantage to show for it.
NT's x86 compatibility layer for the Alpha actually worked pretty damned good too- it ran 95% of the software on x86 and once you ran the apps enough, they ran pretty quickly.
It was AMAZINGLY good, but even amazingly good wasn't good enough. Because you could always buy an x86 box that would run x86 executables faster than the Alpha for less than the Alpha.
Very few people kept using NT/Alpha for very long. They either went to an OS with more open source software that could be recompiled for Alpha (Tru64, Linux) or had a growing pool of native commercial software (Tru64, VMS), or they went back to NT/Intel.
Those WinNT customers who wanted performance went with Alpha.
And then they either switched from Windows to Tru64, VMS, or Linux... or they went back to the x86... because it turns out the only reason for using Windows NT was to run WIndows executables. Unless you had the source code, that meant running Intel code under emulation.
DEC's emulation code was amazingly good, but it didn't let an Alpha emulate an x86 as well as a much cheaper real x86.
By the time you add on the stuff that comes standard on the Mac but not on the competition the margin is a lot smaller than it used to be.
IF and ONLY IF you want precisely that set of "stuff". I don't want a built-in monitor on my desktop Mac, and I don't want a huge dual-capable tower with multiple cooling zones either. I already have a better monitor than Apple ships on the eMac or most of the G4 iMacs, and I can't afford a flat panel.
So to buy a new Mac to replace my Beige G3 (the last Mac Apple made that had the kind of tradeoffs I'm looking for) I would have to pay a huge premium for "stuff" I don't want.
for laptops, Apple actually seems to have the advantage these days
I can get a new 15" 1024x768 Windows laptop for under $1000. I can get one with a 15" screen that can display 1280x1024 for the same price as a 14" iBook with a 1024x768 screen. If you look at the 15" Powerbook I can get an IBM Thinkpad with the best keyboard on the market that'll display 1400x1050.
Aside: DAMN, I wish Apple would do another joint venture with IBM and produce a Thinkpad that ran Mac OS X. The Thinkpad might look like a Volvo next to the Powerbook's Delorean lines, but it's a hell of a lot nicer piece of hardware to actually use.
The advantage to Apple, and what keeps me using my upgraded Beige G3 (G4/466 + Radeon 7000) instead of the 1.7 GHz P4 Intel box I "downgraded" from (and that cost less than this pre-iMac Mac and its upgrades) is the OS. I can't imagine why anyone would want to run Windows on anything but an x86: the whole point to Windows is the applications, and even the best just-in-time recompilers aren't going to make anything but a real x86 cost-effective.
Trust me on this, I've still got an ARC-console Alpha in the lab at work. DEC's recompilation technology was insanely great, and the Alpha is a wonderful target for recompilation because of its low overhead instruction set and massive register bank, and it wasn't enough to make an Alpha run x86 code competitively.
I can't imagine buying a PPC-based machine to run a Windows desktop (the XboX 2 is a different story, of course, again because of the applications). Mac OS X makes the price premium (the very real premium) worth it, but spending more to run Windows slower? I don't think so.
At least twice a year Microsoft comes out with another security patch to try and block the latest holes in IE, without changing the underlying design flaws that make the explouts possible. Shortly afterwards, another hole surfaces. Everyone with a passing understanding of the 20th Century knows the expression "generals are always prepared to fight the last war": assuming the lessons learned in the last war are all that is needed to prepare them for the next. The classic example is france preparing for trench warfare all over again, caught unprepared for the German Blitzkreig.
Microsoft doesn't do that well. They're forever preparing for the first war all over again, never learning the lesson they're faced with after every new exploit.
The problem is that Microsoft is trying to use discretionary access control to implement a design that requires mandatory access control. In an environment with mandatory access control, every object (document, program, web page, email message) in the OS has its security level bound to it in such a way that an application displaying that object can have no more rights than the least secure object it has accessed. The only way to raise the security level of an object is through a trusted component that has explicitly been granted the rights to do so.
Their "security zones" can't be depended on unless the whole operating system and all applications operate on this basis. If they're not going to create a compartmentalised Windows AND make it the default configuration (and wouldn't people scream at that!), the only place they can create these compartments, these internal layers of sandboxes, is by having the applications themselves handle their own sandboxing. Remove the responsibility for trust management and remote access from the HTML control and let it merely render HTML. If the document displayed wants to access an image or stylesheet or script, run a script or a plugin or embedded component, let it ask the application for it, and let the application decide if the request should go through. Internet Explorer would let it fetch remote documents, but not run scripts or applets that weren't sandboxed, nor pass URLs or files to applications that aren't prepared to enforce the same level of mistrust. Windows Explorer wouldn't display remote documents at all. Outlook would be even more restrictive. And IE wouldn't blithely pass files to arbitrary desktop applications to open.
You can't do this by having the HTML control guess, no matter how good a guess it can make, because it's not in a position where it can actually know what rights the document should have. Only the application does.
Split the HTML control down the middle like this, and restrict IE to only running fully sandboxed applets and scripts, and there would be very little change in the user's experience. About the only thing they'd notice is that Windows Update would have to become a separate program instead of an ActiveX plugin (and likely run faster), and a few applications would need updates because they were doing dangerous things. There would be an enormous improvement in security, though, and Microsoft could quit wasting time on fixing the unfixable and get around to working on the NEXT war instead.
This was a discussion about Linus' motivation for licensing Linux under the GPL.
That's right. I was responding to the claim that Linux use of the GPL implied that he believed GNU's founding principle. It doesn't.
GNU's founding principle is the notion of Free Software
GNU's founding principle is opposition to the incorporation of free software in proprietary systems. In particular, it started with Stallman's reaction to the conversion or forking of Emacs as a commercial product. There are many other reasons to believe in Free Software that have nothing to do with ones attitude towards proprietary software. One can even believe in Free Software and not mind seeing it incorporated in closed source software.
Seriously. I know this for a fact. Through personal experience.
if I choose to put the GPL to use as a software license, there's a pretty darn good indication that I made that choice because I believe in Free Software
If I choose to use the BSD license rather than the GPL does that imply then that I don't believe in Free Software? If I choose to use the GPL and say that I did it for utterly practical reasons unrelated to my beliefs, what does that say about my beliefs?
Remember what the topic is. If the topic is GPL versus BSD, and you say that Linus used the GPL because he believed in "Free Software", then are you saying that the BSD license implies a lack of belief in "Free Software"?
If you do, well, go back and read that "I" this and "I" that stuff, because that's where it comes from, and if you still can't see why I think it's relevant and why I think you're wrong, well, it won't help to repeat it.
If you don't, then what was the point you were trying to make? Because I'm damned if I can see what it has to do with the subject.
Why bother creating a Unix-clone when someone else has already done it, and you can freely obtain the source code? But that doesn't mean that he didn't believe in Free Software.
Buddy, I'm one of the guys who was working on Net/2 and 386BSD at the time, and I still use the BSD license by choice, and I sure as hell believe in Free Software. I believed in Free Software before Stallman wrote the GNU Manifesto. I believed in Free Software back when the only free C compiler was a subset and the Beagle Brothers were the voice of reason in the hobbyist world. I believed in Free Software when Microsoft was a bunch of overcapitalised geeks (would that they'd stayed that small).
You don't have to believe in GNU's founding principles to believe in Free Software (or Open Source Software, or Open Systems, or however you want to approach a software environment where you don't have to pay for the equivalent of the very air you breathe). You don't have to believe in GNU's founding principles to find the GPL useful. If you stop and think about it you'll see that nothing in your quotes and commentary contradicts that.
If I somehow worked out some nice legal agreement, that you could sign and no longer be allowed to use Linux, how much would I have to pay you to sign that?
Depends on the terms. If it meant I would have to buy new licenses if I ever had to use Linux in the future, it'd depend on what that fee was. If it just meant I'd have to replace my existing Linux boxes or pay for them, the issue would be academic because i don't have any.
you can't un-GPL it once its been released under GPL
Sure you can. You can't retract the existing GPL-licensed version, but you can release a version under another license. You can also withdraw your copy of the source and hope nobody else is actively distributing it... that wouldn't work for Linux, of course, but I've run into a few now-commercial products that had earlier open-licensed (including GPL) versions that I can't find source for.
There was a bunch of open-source NeXTstep software, for example, that's completely vanished as far as I have been able to tell.
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Being able to join a service and weasel your way out of heading overseas is a sign of knowing people in high places, not being in the guard.
Fair enough. I should know better, I do know better. Will you accept my apologies for unintentionally implying otherwise?
30 years ago, a large percentage of the programmers out there were writing what was basically spreadsheet code. Some manager needed some information, and that meant a programmer had to write a program to read data, generate reports, and add them to the daily jobs. Then came spreadsheets, and the manager could do that work instead. The programmer was out of a job...
Well, no. Instead, he worked on more sophisticated analyses, software that didn't fit in Visicalc or Lotus 1-2-3.
Time after time over the decades there's been predictions that some new productivity tool was going to replace programmers. It hasn't happened. Because what a programmer does, basically, is to do the things that people havethought up that haven't yet become popular enough or common enough to be canned in a tool.
The advent of the Codeless Development Environment
If what you're doing doesn't involve code, it's not development, it's configuration. And that's great, because having programmers wasting time on configuration is a drag on productivity. Anything you already know how to do, that you've already written code to do, you don't do it again. If you do, well, that's a problem you need to fix, write a program to do it, go on to something else...
And you know this how?
Do I know what how? What is it I said that you're upset about?
Given the site you're referncing, I assume you don't think I'm being outrageous in claiming that Cheney's actually human (yes, yes, I know about the jokes) or that Bush's National Guard service is being blown completely out of proportion? Is that a fair assumption?
So...
What claim did I actually make? I didn't say that Kerry did a good job, or that he didn't do a good job. I didn't say that he deserved his medals, or that he didn't deserve his medals. I didn't say anything about what he actually did on the swift boats.
What I actually said was: "Whether Kerry exaggerated his role or not, it's a fact that he asked to go to Vietnam, and he volunteered for hazardous duty."
What are you objecting to?
That Kerry might or might not have exaggerated his role?
That Kerry asked to go to Vietnam?
That Kerry volunteered for hazardous duty?
Please connect the dots for me, I'm all ears. Honest, but I can't make out what you're trying to bring to my attention without more context, thanks.
Finally someone has built a PC that costs more than a Mac and actually has worse specs than the Mac! I wouldn't have thought it possible!
Um, let's take a reality check here.
Look, Stewart's show isn't about tough questions. It's about cracking jokes and having fun. That's his job there. If he started asking any politician tough questions he'd be out on his ass, sooner or later. It's comedy. It's not supposed to be real. It's like complaining that Readers Digest "Humor in Uniform" doesn't get into the realities of the war in Iraq, or that "Spy vs Spy" isn't as detailed as "Smiley's People".
His point, which nobody addressed, is that there's all this time and energy wasted on crap that is just irrelevant. What was most of that transcript about? Dick Cheney's daughter is a lesbian, and he seems to have mixed feelings about it. Well, geeze, is anyone surprised? You gotta expect he's going to be touchy about it sometimes, and able to deal with it other times. He's human.
Or let's look at the National Guard. The spin that's going on there is crazy. There's no reason to attack Bush about his service in the National Guard... we know that he had a troubled youth, with a lot of irresponsible behaviour. You either accept that he grew out of it, or you don't. You look for signs that he's learned from his mistakes... in fact that's something that's worth asking: what did he learn from that time. I'd like to know that.
Or the whole Swift Boat melodrama. Whether Kerry exaggerated his role or not, it's a fact that he asked to go to Vietnam, and he volunteered for hazardous duty. If it turns out that he wasn't as courageous as he wants you to think, if his motivations were mixed, he still had more backbone than someone who took a slot in the National Guard.
I could go on and on, but Stewart's right, the media is asking stupid questions and letting the candidates deflect them into concentrating on stupid issues far far too often... and paying attention to real problems far too infrequently. Really, they should ignore what either candidate says about the other. Treat is as a "hot tip" for something to investigate, at the most. They should ignore anything the candidate says about their own character... of course they're going to try and say good things about themselves. Instead, look for the things the candidates aren't talking about or what they're talking about they aren't explaining. Because that's where the real skeletons are going to be buried.
Not only is this old, but it was old news back when I first started using computers with hard disks... the only difference is the mechanism you use to get a kernel booted from another device.
The main advantage to a big screen, like the 1400x1050 15" screen on the Thinkpad, is you don't need to worry about virtual desktops and window shading... there's plenty of space to work in. Two screens is even better.
Screens are one of Apple's problems ever since Jobs came back. The later Beige screens were nice, high resolution Trinitron displays... but the LCDs are annoying low-res, and the eMac's tube is awful. I have a $170 CTX CRT with a Trinitron-clone tube that handles 1600x1200 nicely.
Without adding third-party commercial software it won't do a fraction of what any linux distro does out of the box
On the other hand it has a well designed GUI that is, if not quite as good as Windows', by far the most consistent desktop you can get. Compare that to Linux, where every application has a different GUI, just about, and some of them are truly awful.
Desktop Manager is a nice idea, but it's alpha, and every time I've tried to use it it doesn't work.
I guess that's one of those "your milage may vary" things, because it works fine for me. What it does is hook into the functionality Apple provides out of the box... but neglects to provide a GUI for. I only use it when I'm on a small screen, though... anything under 1280x1024. I'd like some better decluttering tools (more below), but they don't exist on Linux either.
Out of the box Aqua doesn't even have window shading, for christs sake!
I don't like window shading all that much. I use Windowmaker on X11 by preference, but rarely use windowshading there either. With a large enough physical desktop, a couple of virtuals, and iconification... much less clutter than a bunch of title bars floating around in inconvenient places.
I'd really like to see a more 3d desktop, like Expose' in real time... with lesser used windows fading into the background as new windows are created until they hit the side and iconify.
And as to running an X-server under Aqua, it doesn't seem to work nearly as well as it should.
Which server are you using? I've got a piss-poor Mac, and X11 apps are often more responsive than Aqua ones, once I turn off Quartz Extreme (which duplicates the X11 bitmaps in the GPU, and thus increases copying overhead and memory use).
I can't stand using KDE or Gnome on my PC, Windowmaker's great, but any of the "desktop style" environments suck up too many computrons.
It will be many, many years before we can emulate 2D animation with 3D, and then, what's the point, why not draw it?
Can you draw it in real time?
Why would you want to do that? Go have a look at one of the regent Legend of Zelda games - Wind Walker. Think about it.
But, listening to what you want, I don't see why you wouldn't just grab a PowerMac.
That's an easy one: Because I can't afford to spend $2000 on a computer. That's a $1500 premium over the x86-based box that would satisfy my requirements.
But the iBook will be lighter, and the battery will last longer.
I'll debate the battery some other time, but for the former, that just means that particular premium is worth it for you, it's not for me, and again I can't buy a Mac without it.
I wouldn't want any higher resolution - it would be a waste
Have you tried it? Apple used to make a laptop with higher resolution than typical, and people didn't go "oh, we don't need that resolution", they went, "oh, it's jewel-like".
I'd definately prefer to throw Linux on it.
OS X will do anything that I know of that Linux can do on a laptop, and it does it with better display drivers. I mean anything: If you want a window manager with virtual desktops, you can run Desktops Manager on Aqua, or you can simply install and run the same X11-based software you'd be running on Linux.
I never got to use an Alpha, but it was my understanding that what killed them was simply economy of scale.
Yeh, Intel's economy of scale gave them the resources to put enough pressure on Compaq to kill them.
Funny stuff! Bold, defiant, authoritative statements like "There's no way my job or our work will ever be outsourced. " are always amusing.
Let's see, he's working at Fort Meade and his job requires a security clearance...
Well, it's possible the US will go to an all-mercenary military, like the Romans, but an all-mercenary intelligence apparatus?
I'm sure I read some kind of SF novel about that...
As the market tightens, reputation becomes more important. On way to get a reputation as a good designer or coder is to release some well-designed open-source code, no?
I believe most of the folks using WinNT Alpha had source for their core applications (which allowed for an easy migration to Linux years later)
Yeh, that's us.
Except it wasn't "years later". Once you're committed to porting your applications, why stay on Windows? The only advantage to staying there is because you depend on commercial Windows applications or middleware, and that was all intel Even the third party Alpha apps there were dried up in no time. Once you've jumped it becomes a LOT easier to port open source apps to any of the other operating systems on the Alpha... the application base becomes a disadvantage.
Subject: Re:GPL vs BSD
Comment:
It doesn't? I'm baffled at how you've come to that conclusion. I think there is a strong implication.
I don't, because I've talked to too many people who use the GPL simply because they see it as the default license for free software. I don't, because I've talked to people who don't care and it's "good enough". Because I've talked to people who decided it solves some problem they need solving. People who saw someone else use it. People who thought they had to. I've had people who used the GPL and when I asked them for a copy of the source they said "Oh, I didn't know it meant that! Thanks, I'll fix that right now."
There are all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with the GNU manifesto.
You can't tell anything about what someone's beliefs are based on the use of the GPL. You can only tell what their beliefs are by reading what they write about their beliefs.
Linux wrote about why he used the GPL. You quoted it, and what you quoted doesn't say "I beleieve in the principles of the FSF", it says "The GPL solved a problem that I needed solving". Back then the GPL was the only widely used license that solved that problem. There's lots more, now.
Though GNU has had to fight against the incorporation of Free Software in proprietary systems in order to advance the cause, it's not the founding principle.
It absolutely is. Not only was the GNU Manifesto created as a direct result of exactly that, but the only difference between the GPL and other licenses, is that it doesn't allow proprietary forks. If not for that, there would be no reason for the GPL to exist, and there would have been no motivation for creating it.
Finally:
The only "evidence" I hear from you is that, "I'm okay with using the BSD license, and having my Free Software converted into proprietary software, so Linus must be okay with that idea too."
I never said any such thing. You made a claim about Linus' motives. The points made in support of your claim included an assertion that believing in Free Software was equivalent to believing in the GNU form of Free Software. The only reason for that anecdote is to demonstrate that this specific point is not true. THAT IS ALL.
Anything else you want to infer from that, including such absurd comments at the one quoted above, is something happening in your head. I didn't say any such thing.
if it can be shown that the Segway is largely used by disabled/mobility-impaired people, bad things could happen to Segway LLC
What about them building something like the recently slashdotted Segway RV concept model, something that was at the same time more practical than the bizarre and dangerous Segway? Such a device could easily compete with the overregulated and overpriced Ibot, so it sounds like they're in a bit of a bind. Anything that makes the Segway more practical could open them up to landshark attacks.
I don't know why Microsoft decided to go with PPC
The obvious answer is that if the XBox isn't running the same processor as desktop PCs then people won't be able so easily to hack their XBox and use it as a cheap PC subsidised by Microsoft without Microsoft getting their money back on game licenses.
Sorry, I mean "Windows has come to Itanium, who's switched"?
Think about it. Intel has spent YEARS pushing the Itanium architecture harder than anyone could possibly afford to spend pushing PPC. HP's Itanium boxes are finally getting to the point where the idea of them taking over from Alpha and Precision Architecture on UNIX servers isn't actually insane. How much impact are they making on the desktop, after all those years of aggressive promotion?
They've been so unsuccessful even getting people to think seriously about it that AMD's been able to steal a march on intel with a 64-bit extension to the x86 architecture.
Windows and the x86 are siamese twins. The only way to get people to switch from the x86 is if you can get an OS, chip, and emulation architecture that lets you run x86 code faster than the real x86, cheaper than the real x86, and cooler than the real x86... and if you do that, you'll sell it as a new implementation of the x86, as Intel, AMD, and everyone else who's built an x86 on a RISC/VLIW core has already done.
on the SERVER, there was hardly anything you couldn't get
Of course if you were running an Alpha as a server, you probably were running VMS or Tru64, because these operating systems were designed for that environment. The only reason we ever ran Oracle on Windows, for example, was because Oracle's prices were so much lower on Windows... it was purely a pricing decision that we could make when performance wasn't a major issue. And on pure price, NT/Alpha was never in the running.
As for the pure-Windows environment, the main advantage there (the only advantage Microsoft promotes that I can agree with, actually) is that you're doing everything on one platform. I can't see how having a few Alpha boxes for heavy lifting would be a win: you end up with multiple platforms (hardware now, as well as software to a lesser extent) and very little advantage to show for it.
NT on Alpha didn't fail miserably
Did you try it? I did.
NT's x86 compatibility layer for the Alpha actually worked pretty damned good too- it ran 95% of the software on x86 and once you ran the apps enough, they ran pretty quickly.
It was AMAZINGLY good, but even amazingly good wasn't good enough. Because you could always buy an x86 box that would run x86 executables faster than the Alpha for less than the Alpha.
Very few people kept using NT/Alpha for very long. They either went to an OS with more open source software that could be recompiled for Alpha (Tru64, Linux) or had a growing pool of native commercial software (Tru64, VMS), or they went back to NT/Intel.
Those WinNT customers who wanted performance went with Alpha.
And then they either switched from Windows to Tru64, VMS, or Linux... or they went back to the x86... because it turns out the only reason for using Windows NT was to run WIndows executables. Unless you had the source code, that meant running Intel code under emulation.
DEC's emulation code was amazingly good, but it didn't let an Alpha emulate an x86 as well as a much cheaper real x86.
IF and ONLY IF you want precisely that set of "stuff". I don't want a built-in monitor on my desktop Mac, and I don't want a huge dual-capable tower with multiple cooling zones either. I already have a better monitor than Apple ships on the eMac or most of the G4 iMacs, and I can't afford a flat panel.
So to buy a new Mac to replace my Beige G3 (the last Mac Apple made that had the kind of tradeoffs I'm looking for) I would have to pay a huge premium for "stuff" I don't want.
for laptops, Apple actually seems to have the advantage these days
I can get a new 15" 1024x768 Windows laptop for under $1000. I can get one with a 15" screen that can display 1280x1024 for the same price as a 14" iBook with a 1024x768 screen. If you look at the 15" Powerbook I can get an IBM Thinkpad with the best keyboard on the market that'll display 1400x1050.
The advantage to Apple, and what keeps me using my upgraded Beige G3 (G4/466 + Radeon 7000) instead of the 1.7 GHz P4 Intel box I "downgraded" from (and that cost less than this pre-iMac Mac and its upgrades) is the OS. I can't imagine why anyone would want to run Windows on anything but an x86: the whole point to Windows is the applications, and even the best just-in-time recompilers aren't going to make anything but a real x86 cost-effective.
Trust me on this, I've still got an ARC-console Alpha in the lab at work. DEC's recompilation technology was insanely great, and the Alpha is a wonderful target for recompilation because of its low overhead instruction set and massive register bank, and it wasn't enough to make an Alpha run x86 code competitively.
I can't imagine buying a PPC-based machine to run a Windows desktop (the XboX 2 is a different story, of course, again because of the applications). Mac OS X makes the price premium (the very real premium) worth it, but spending more to run Windows slower? I don't think so.
At least twice a year Microsoft comes out with another security patch to try and block the latest holes in IE, without changing the underlying design flaws that make the explouts possible. Shortly afterwards, another hole surfaces. Everyone with a passing understanding of the 20th Century knows the expression "generals are always prepared to fight the last war": assuming the lessons learned in the last war are all that is needed to prepare them for the next. The classic example is france preparing for trench warfare all over again, caught unprepared for the German Blitzkreig.
Microsoft doesn't do that well. They're forever preparing for the first war all over again, never learning the lesson they're faced with after every new exploit.
The problem is that Microsoft is trying to use discretionary access control to implement a design that requires mandatory access control. In an environment with mandatory access control, every object (document, program, web page, email message) in the OS has its security level bound to it in such a way that an application displaying that object can have no more rights than the least secure object it has accessed. The only way to raise the security level of an object is through a trusted component that has explicitly been granted the rights to do so.
Their "security zones" can't be depended on unless the whole operating system and all applications operate on this basis. If they're not going to create a compartmentalised Windows AND make it the default configuration (and wouldn't people scream at that!), the only place they can create these compartments, these internal layers of sandboxes, is by having the applications themselves handle their own sandboxing. Remove the responsibility for trust management and remote access from the HTML control and let it merely render HTML. If the document displayed wants to access an image or stylesheet or script, run a script or a plugin or embedded component, let it ask the application for it, and let the application decide if the request should go through. Internet Explorer would let it fetch remote documents, but not run scripts or applets that weren't sandboxed, nor pass URLs or files to applications that aren't prepared to enforce the same level of mistrust. Windows Explorer wouldn't display remote documents at all. Outlook would be even more restrictive. And IE wouldn't blithely pass files to arbitrary desktop applications to open.
You can't do this by having the HTML control guess, no matter how good a guess it can make, because it's not in a position where it can actually know what rights the document should have. Only the application does.
Split the HTML control down the middle like this, and restrict IE to only running fully sandboxed applets and scripts, and there would be very little change in the user's experience. About the only thing they'd notice is that Windows Update would have to become a separate program instead of an ActiveX plugin (and likely run faster), and a few applications would need updates because they were doing dangerous things. There would be an enormous improvement in security, though, and Microsoft could quit wasting time on fixing the unfixable and get around to working on the NEXT war instead.
This was a discussion about Linus' motivation for licensing Linux under the GPL.
That's right. I was responding to the claim that Linux use of the GPL implied that he believed GNU's founding principle. It doesn't.
GNU's founding principle is the notion of Free Software
GNU's founding principle is opposition to the incorporation of free software in proprietary systems. In particular, it started with Stallman's reaction to the conversion or forking of Emacs as a commercial product. There are many other reasons to believe in Free Software that have nothing to do with ones attitude towards proprietary software. One can even believe in Free Software and not mind seeing it incorporated in closed source software.
Seriously. I know this for a fact. Through personal experience.
if I choose to put the GPL to use as a software license, there's a pretty darn good indication that I made that choice because I believe in Free Software
If I choose to use the BSD license rather than the GPL does that imply then that I don't believe in Free Software? If I choose to use the GPL and say that I did it for utterly practical reasons unrelated to my beliefs, what does that say about my beliefs?
Remember what the topic is. If the topic is GPL versus BSD, and you say that Linus used the GPL because he believed in "Free Software", then are you saying that the BSD license implies a lack of belief in "Free Software"?
If you do, well, go back and read that "I" this and "I" that stuff, because that's where it comes from, and if you still can't see why I think it's relevant and why I think you're wrong, well, it won't help to repeat it.
If you don't, then what was the point you were trying to make? Because I'm damned if I can see what it has to do with the subject.
Why bother creating a Unix-clone when someone else has already done it, and you can freely obtain the source code? But that doesn't mean that he didn't believe in Free Software.
Buddy, I'm one of the guys who was working on Net/2 and 386BSD at the time, and I still use the BSD license by choice, and I sure as hell believe in Free Software. I believed in Free Software before Stallman wrote the GNU Manifesto. I believed in Free Software back when the only free C compiler was a subset and the Beagle Brothers were the voice of reason in the hobbyist world. I believed in Free Software when Microsoft was a bunch of overcapitalised geeks (would that they'd stayed that small).
You don't have to believe in GNU's founding principles to believe in Free Software (or Open Source Software, or Open Systems, or however you want to approach a software environment where you don't have to pay for the equivalent of the very air you breathe). You don't have to believe in GNU's founding principles to find the GPL useful. If you stop and think about it you'll see that nothing in your quotes and commentary contradicts that.
If I somehow worked out some nice legal agreement, that you could sign and no longer be allowed to use Linux, how much would I have to pay you to sign that?
Depends on the terms. If it meant I would have to buy new licenses if I ever had to use Linux in the future, it'd depend on what that fee was. If it just meant I'd have to replace my existing Linux boxes or pay for them, the issue would be academic because i don't have any.
you can't un-GPL it once its been released under GPL
Sure you can. You can't retract the existing GPL-licensed version, but you can release a version under another license. You can also withdraw your copy of the source and hope nobody else is actively distributing it... that wouldn't work for Linux, of course, but I've run into a few now-commercial products that had earlier open-licensed (including GPL) versions that I can't find source for.
There was a bunch of open-source NeXTstep software, for example, that's completely vanished as far as I have been able to tell.