There were two bulls standing atop a ridge overlooking a lush green valley where their herd were grazing. The young bull, eyes full of fire and a spring in his step, turned to the old bull, who was a little slower than he used to be, and said "I have an idea! Let's run down there and screw a cow!" The old bull turned slowly to look at the youngster and replied with a chuckle, "I have a better idea. Let's walk, and screw 'em all."
An overworked developer with no life, who is constantly "running down the hill," is likely to provide a lot of half-baked solutions and spend most of those forty extra hours each week correcting mistakes made in haste. It is much better to "walk down" and give oneself time to develop a properly crafted solution in the first place.
Having "a life" is important, too. Wasn't it Einstein who remarked that the key to his talents was imagination, not necessarily intelligence? It's difficult to be imaginative, creative, or thorough when you're burned out and sick of your work.
I'm sure the LEAs behind this re-write would force us all to accept brainwave tranceiver implants if they could figure out how to do it. As far as they're concerned, your average law-abiding citizen is just a mark to be hustled.
Congress, on the other hand, are just lazy, uninformed, spoiled, sub-par human beings who don't give a hoot in hell about the laws they pass as long as they are returned to their gravy train every few years. Most of them never bother to read the bills they vote on, even though they all fight for the chance to give a little "Give me this law, or give me death!" speech every time the C-SPAN cameras' little red lights flicker. They don't care if the laws they pass actually accomplish anything useful, as long as there will be another checkmark next to their name in the "Tough on crime" column in some lame "Voter Guide for The Braindead" in 00. Anti-crypto laws have just about as much effect on criminals' use of crypto as gun control has on their use of guns. The law-abiding are the only ones who obey these stupid laws.
Judging by the conduct of the folks from Washington, they think the laws they pass are for suckers. Kinda' makes me wanna' puke. Sorry for the rant, but I'm fed up.
I often have to provide tech support to Windows 95/98 users. Describing icons and menus to the remote user is a distraction and a time-waster. I'd estimate that 95% of the time, the first thing I have the user do is open a DOS box so I can tell him exactly what to do to get his problem fixed ("Now, enter D-I-R, that's delta india romeo...now press the spacebar..."). Isolating and fixing the problem often takes a handful of commands and a little reading on the part of the user ("OK, it says 'volume in drive C has no label...'") but this saves me and the user a lot of time and frustration in the long run.
It would be expensive and frustrating (a nightmare?) to try to support an OS over the phone without the ability to dictate concise commands that allow no room for interpretation, and usually return only the information required. Any Linux distributor who tried to eliminate the CLI in order to produce a "distro for the braindead," would either be forced to charge unrealistic prices in order to cover the additional support costs, or go broke.
When I read this article yesterday, I was surprised to learn that Linux hadn't had a widely-accepted GUI until six months ago, when KDE and GNOME were born (I suppose that as far as some writers are concerned, nothing exists until it's been hyped in the media).
I'm sure Mr. Jaffe will receive hundreds of polite emails like the one I sent with a short background on X, window managers, etc.
My quandary is, where do these trade writers keep getting these silly notions about Linux not having a GUI? Is the MS FUD that pervasive?
I didn't say that the current incarnation of Office 2000 is a thin client application--I said they were working towards this goal. There's plenty of press that proves this, including statements from Mr. Gates himself.
Here's an interesting article that gives some clues on where things are headed. This is not a pretty picture:
The problem with the "AOL PC" is where are the other applications, ie. Office applications??? What else could you do with an AOL PC other than surf and send email?? Not much else -- no games, no office apps, no servers, just surfing.
Look at what both Corel and Microsoft are doing with their 2000 suites. They're working towards selling the end user a "thin client" application that includes just enough functionality to allow the user to do whatever has to be done on the client side, i.e. setup, configuration, UI, etc. with the core of the application living on a server at your local neighborhood Application Service Provider (ASP). In other words, without the ASP (whether it's your corporate app servers or your ISP) your MS Office is an empty shell. This is a bad thing, just another way to lock users into proprietary software, in my opinion.
There are some interesting articles floating around that detail how Microsoft, Intel, HP, Cisco and other big players are investing in the infrastructure required for this type of application.
Based on what I've read of users' comments on the latest incarnation of VB, along with some comments Microsoft have let slip about warming up to Perl, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft were to replace VBA with Perl in the future. It makes a lot of sense, if you think about it. I'm sure those of us who are stuck with MS apps would appreciate being able to work with Perl rather than VBA.
We can only hope AS keep MS from making Perl for Windows as trashy as VB. If not, I'm sure there will always be a non-Microsoftized distro of Perl for Windows.
Geez, I just got a "user unknown" back from my email to "flashsource@macromedia.com," the address listed in the article, asking for information on the license. A sign of things to come?
I didn't see anything in the article that made me think they were taking a stand one way or the other. I emailed them for more information, either a URL for the license or a copy of it, so I could post more information here. If I get a response I'll post it later today.
The requests go out over port 81, they come back to an unpriveleged port (ports greater than 1023) just like everything else. If you're going directly through the firewall, ask the admin to open 81 outgoing, to the pix server fqdn only, if need be. If you're using a proxy, they can tweak that to allow the pix as well.
Since I'm a bit of a newbie, I wonder, why not just have the pix server listen to 8080, since it seems like more firewalls would allow that port outgoing?
Here are the URLs for the silicon.com interview with ESR, painstakingly extracted from the HTML. It's only 4:55 long, just a telephone interview, no video of ESR.
From the README: 1. RealFlash is currently not working on Linux and AIX. You will receive the error message "Some components are not available to provide playback of this presentation on your system," when trying to play RealFlash clips.
I installed the Shockwave Linux beta last night. It's pretty cool, actually. It chokes on stuff that requires "Director," whatever that is (the Macromedia site is no help in that regard), but otherwise seems to work pretty well, so far.
If you want to get it, just visit a site with the "download shockwave" button, click it, assuming you're using Netscape Linux, you'll go straight to the Linux download. Bust the files out of the tarball, copy the plugin to a directory listed in $NPX_PLUGIN_PATH, or to one of $MOZILLA_HOME/plugins, or $HOME/.netscape/plugins, restart Netscape, you're there.
Run 'strace realplayer' and see what it's doing when it segfaults. At this point, it could be anything.
I had a bit of trouble getting G2 working, but I ran some tape today and I usually have problems with DMA buffers after loading and unloading the SCSI modules (goes away after a few error messages -- I'm going to build preallocated buffers next time around). I tried rvplayer right afterwards and sure enough, got the "couldn't open sound device" message.
G2 is working now. Observations:
Better sound, at least IMO and on my hardware. YMMV.
No "skips" when I open web pages or large files, as with rvplayer 5.0 (with linux 2.2.x "open()" hack).
No more "net congestion" messages. This is a subjective observation, granted, but I've gone back and forth between rvplayer 5.0 and G2, listening to WABC New York and the difference is very noticeable.
G2 looks a little nicer than 5.0.
The statistics display is prettier. It shows a heart monitor with percentage of target bandwidth.
I haven't tried loading from Netscape yet, but for my setup (loading from WM menu) it seems Ok, so far.
Re:"Various bug fixes"
on
Netscape 4.6
·
· Score: 1
It (4.6) does seem to have fixed the extremely broken dropdown menus on forms. Selecting an option from a dropdown no longer prevents subsequent text box input -- that alone was worth the price I paid -- oops, it was free, wasn't it (gratuitous barb at people who gripe about the quality of software for which they are expected to pay only the time required to download and install it). 'twould have been nice if they'd have included that nice little tidbit of information.
Nevermind the bogus claims this page is making about NT's superiority over Linux (Linux inherited UNIX' weak security because of buffer exploits? Like NT doesn't suffer from the same weakness?)--the fact remains that Mindcraft/Microsoft tried to pull a fast one and they were caught with their pants around their collective ankles. This challenge is nothing but kicking dust in the air until Microsoft and Mindcraft admit that they set the tests up to show Linux in a poor light. I am not willing to give Microsoft a pass on this one, and participating in their benchmark without forcing them to acknowledge the real reason for our dissatisfaction, instead of dismissing it as "attacking the messenger," would do a disservice to the Linux community. This would be like the archetypal battered wife returning to her abusive husband because he promises to clean up his act.
It should be noted that one of the side effects of the Mindcraft benchmarks was that some very effective optimizations for Apache were identified and, last I read, were going to be submitted to the Apache group. I imagine the benchmark rules will prohibit their use in the proposed benchmark.
The Linux community should respond in kind with a challenge to Microsoft admit that the first benchmark was a sham, that Mindcraft lied about the extent of their efforts to find help tuning Linux and Apache, and that Linux and Apache were de-tuned on the test machines. Last, but not least, they should fire Mindcraft.
Time to subpoena Microsoft emails? Now you've got me thinking there must be an email somewhere on Microsoft's network that reads something like: "Bill, we've finally found a hardware configuration that is optimal for NT and produces sub-par results running Linux. We're confident that if we use this configuration for the Mindcraft benchmarks, Linux will come out the stinker."
Wouldn't it be interesting to see if Linux could meet or exceed the NT benchmark results on cheaper hardware? My guess is that it would be possible for a couple of experienced Linux admins to match the NT results with less hardware. While we're at it, let's use the entire benchmark suite, not just the static HTML, as the representative from the publisher suggested. That, or use Squid to cache the content, as disk I/O seems to be one of the major problems.
If you think anyone had any real input into the second set of Mindcraft benchmarks, go have a look at AC's commentary, entitled "Bruce Weiner: Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics":
There have been a lot of comments from the Linux community regarding business models, that Microsoft can't compete with Linux because we're on different playing fields, etc. It's obvious by now that Microsoft aren't interested in competition, i.e. winning by providing a better value than their competitors. Instead, they seem to react to any threat to their market dominance by striking a Faustian bargain with the competitor then calling in their chips, draining the competitor's resources in a Vaporware arms race (the Borland vs. Microsoft OOP war?) or failing those, making their software incompatible with the competitor's products, and/or spreading mis-information about the threat.
Since it would be virtually impossible for Microsoft to "own" Linux, we can only assume they've already defaulted to FUD. The FUD strategy makes the "playing field" issue almost insignificant--Microsoft's marketing department could probably kill Brand X dishwashing liquid if Mr. Gates thought he would benefit. I haven't wanted to consider the tactics Microsoft might resort to in an attempt to supress Linux, but I think we've gotten a look at a few pages from their playbook already:
The Mindcraft benchmarks.
The second set of Mindcraft benchmarks, which will probably claim similarly dismal numbers for Linux, but will probably add insult to injury by claiming they had hands-on assistance from Linus and Alan, when in fact, they were only able to provide general advice and won't be allowed on site for the tests.
The $30,000,000,000.00 Lie.
Muth's "we're already 'open source'" comments, in my view, a cynical attempt to dilute the significance of "Open Source," a registered certification mark.
Claims that Linux has no GUI.
Bill's "no centralized control over source code" fairy tale.
While Microsoft's representatives continue to claim that Linux is only a toy and that they're not worried about it, they've already started the FUD machine rolling. I wish Red Hat and some of the other "heavyweights" would pick up the ball and fight back with some real benchmarks. Why not duplicate the Mindcrafty benchmarks at IBM's labs, with hands-on assistance from a couple recognized NT performance-tuning experts, Linus and Alan on-site?
Personally, I think JWZ's departure and subsequent comments were all about sour grapes. I didn't expect mozilla to be "hacker friendly" for at least a year, I don't understand why anyone would have. Granted, the project has a bit of a "family atmosphere," but what else should we expect?
In hindsight, dumping the legacy rendering engine will probably be seen as the salvation of mozilla. It's smaller, faster and easier to maintain, at least according to the comments I've read from developers. After the code stabilizes we'll probably see gecko popping up in all kinds of applications and a lot more interest in development. I think mozilla is going to put the screws to Internet Exploder and will eventually become the de facto standard against which other browsers are measured.
Unlike the proprietary console games that Blockbuster rents -- which work almost flawlessly -- computer games are notoriously difficult to install and configure. And they often cause computer crashes.
Only because Windows is so poorly designed.
This is a bad idea and I doubt it will be any more successful than divx. Installing and running Windows games is a couple notches below rocket science, and I doubt there will be much support available from these guys (unless they want to go broke).
I don't think I want the remnants of ten or twenty Windows games (that I may never use again) lingering on my disk, either.
Anyone with a browser knows that there have been two "obstacles" to Linux desktop domination, GUI and office applications. Red Hat have already done quite a bit to support the development of GNOME. I expect the first thing they'd do with with their new capital would be to put more resources into polishing up GNOME and development on the GNOME office applications. They'd have to do this in order to compete with the Corel Linux distro, which will eventually include KDE (a bit more mature than GNOME) and the Corel Suite port.
Slashdot Mirror
There were two bulls standing atop a ridge overlooking a lush green valley where their herd were grazing. The young bull, eyes full of fire and a spring in his step, turned to the old bull, who was a little slower than he used to be, and said "I have an idea! Let's run down there and screw a cow!" The old bull turned slowly to look at the youngster and replied with a chuckle, "I have a better idea. Let's walk, and screw 'em all."
An overworked developer with no life, who is constantly "running down the hill," is likely to provide a lot of half-baked solutions and spend most of those forty extra hours each week correcting mistakes made in haste. It is much better to "walk down" and give oneself time to develop a properly crafted solution in the first place.
Having "a life" is important, too. Wasn't it Einstein who remarked that the key to his talents was imagination, not necessarily intelligence? It's difficult to be imaginative, creative, or thorough when you're burned out and sick of your work.
I'm sure the LEAs behind this re-write would force us all to accept brainwave tranceiver implants if they could figure out how to do it. As far as they're concerned, your average law-abiding citizen is just a mark to be hustled.
Congress, on the other hand, are just lazy, uninformed, spoiled, sub-par human beings who don't give a hoot in hell about the laws they pass as long as they are returned to their gravy train every few years. Most of them never bother to read the bills they vote on, even though they all fight for the chance to give a little "Give me this law, or give me death!" speech every time the C-SPAN cameras' little red lights flicker. They don't care if the laws they pass actually accomplish anything useful, as long as there will be another checkmark next to their name in the "Tough on crime" column in some lame "Voter Guide for The Braindead" in 00. Anti-crypto laws have just about as much effect on criminals' use of crypto as gun control has on their use of guns. The law-abiding are the only ones who obey these stupid laws.
Judging by the conduct of the folks from Washington, they think the laws they pass are for suckers. Kinda' makes me wanna' puke. Sorry for the rant, but I'm fed up.
I often have to provide tech support to Windows 95/98 users. Describing icons and menus to the remote user is a distraction and a time-waster. I'd estimate that 95% of the time, the first thing I have the user do is open a DOS box so I can tell him exactly what to do to get his problem fixed ("Now, enter D-I-R, that's delta india romeo...now press the spacebar..."). Isolating and fixing the problem often takes a handful of commands and a little reading on the part of the user ("OK, it says 'volume in drive C has no label...'") but this saves me and the user a lot of time and frustration in the long run.
It would be expensive and frustrating (a nightmare?) to try to support an OS over the phone without the ability to dictate concise commands that allow no room for interpretation, and usually return only the information required. Any Linux distributor who tried to eliminate the CLI in order to produce a "distro for the braindead," would either be forced to charge unrealistic prices in order to cover the additional support costs, or go broke.
When I read this article yesterday, I was surprised to learn that Linux hadn't had a widely-accepted GUI until six months ago, when KDE and GNOME were born (I suppose that as far as some writers are concerned, nothing exists until it's been hyped in the media).
I'm sure Mr. Jaffe will receive hundreds of polite emails like the one I sent with a short background on X, window managers, etc.
My quandary is, where do these trade writers keep getting these silly notions about Linux not having a GUI? Is the MS FUD that pervasive?
I didn't say that the current incarnation of Office 2000 is a thin client application--I said they were working towards this goal. There's plenty of press that proves this, including statements from Mr. Gates himself.
Here's an interesting article that gives some clues on where things are headed. This is not a pretty picture:
http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,3 7913,00.html
The problem with the "AOL PC" is where are the other applications, ie. Office applications??? What else could you do with an AOL PC other than surf and send email?? Not much else -- no games, no office apps, no servers, just surfing.
Look at what both Corel and Microsoft are doing with their 2000 suites. They're working towards selling the end user a "thin client" application that includes just enough functionality to allow the user to do whatever has to be done on the client side, i.e. setup, configuration, UI, etc. with the core of the application living on a server at your local neighborhood Application Service Provider (ASP). In other words, without the ASP (whether it's your corporate app servers or your ISP) your MS Office is an empty shell. This is a bad thing, just another way to lock users into proprietary software, in my opinion.
There are some interesting articles floating around that detail how Microsoft, Intel, HP, Cisco and other big players are investing in the infrastructure required for this type of application.
Based on what I've read of users' comments on the latest incarnation of VB, along with some comments Microsoft have let slip about warming up to Perl, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft were to replace VBA with Perl in the future. It makes a lot of sense, if you think about it. I'm sure those of us who are stuck with MS apps would appreciate being able to work with Perl rather than VBA.
We can only hope AS keep MS from making Perl for Windows as trashy as VB. If not, I'm sure there will always be a non-Microsoftized distro of Perl for Windows.
http://www.senate.gov/
Select your favorite senator from the list, surprise!
Or, just open http://www.senate.gov/index.cfm.
Geez, I just got a "user unknown" back from my email to "flashsource@macromedia.com," the address listed in the article, asking for information on the license. A sign of things to come?
I didn't see anything in the article that made me think they were taking a stand one way or the other. I emailed them for more information, either a URL for the license or a copy of it, so I could post more information here. If I get a response I'll post it later today.
The requests go out over port 81, they come back to an unpriveleged port (ports greater than 1023) just like everything else. If you're going directly through the firewall, ask the admin to open 81 outgoing, to the pix server fqdn only, if need be. If you're using a proxy, they can tweak that to allow the pix as well.
Since I'm a bit of a newbie, I wonder, why not just have the pix server listen to 8080, since it seems like more firewalls would allow that port outgoing?
Here are the URLs for the silicon.com interview with ESR, painstakingly extracted from the HTML. It's only 4:55 long, just a telephone interview, no video of ESR.
From the README:
1. RealFlash is currently not working on Linux and AIX. You will receive the error message "Some components are not available to provide playback of this presentation on your system," when trying to play RealFlash clips.
I installed the Shockwave Linux beta last night. It's pretty cool, actually. It chokes on stuff that requires "Director," whatever that is (the Macromedia site is no help in that regard), but otherwise seems to work pretty well, so far.
If you want to get it, just visit a site with the "download shockwave" button, click it, assuming you're using Netscape Linux, you'll go straight to the Linux download. Bust the files out of the tarball, copy the plugin to a directory listed in $NPX_PLUGIN_PATH, or to one of $MOZILLA_HOME/plugins, or $HOME/.netscape/plugins, restart Netscape, you're there.
Run 'strace realplayer' and see what it's doing when it segfaults. At this point, it could be anything.
I had a bit of trouble getting G2 working, but I ran some tape today and I usually have problems with DMA buffers after loading and unloading the SCSI modules (goes away after a few error messages -- I'm going to build preallocated buffers next time around). I tried rvplayer right afterwards and sure enough, got the "couldn't open sound device" message.
G2 is working now. Observations:
- Better sound, at least IMO and on my hardware. YMMV.
- No "skips" when I open web pages or large files, as with rvplayer 5.0 (with linux 2.2.x "open()" hack).
- No more "net congestion" messages. This is a subjective observation, granted, but I've gone back and forth between rvplayer 5.0 and G2, listening to WABC New York and the difference is very noticeable.
- G2 looks a little nicer than 5.0.
- The statistics display is prettier. It shows a heart monitor with percentage of target bandwidth.
I haven't tried loading from Netscape yet, but for my setup (loading from WM menu) it seems Ok, so far.It (4.6) does seem to have fixed the extremely broken dropdown menus on forms. Selecting an option from a dropdown no longer prevents subsequent text box input -- that alone was worth the price I paid -- oops, it was free, wasn't it (gratuitous barb at people who gripe about the quality of software for which they are expected to pay only the time required to download and install it). 'twould have been nice if they'd have included that nice little tidbit of information.
What, you wanna drink your coffee from a five gallon gasoline can? Hey, that's not a bad idea!
For anyone wondering what's changed in NS 4.6:
http://home.netscap e.com/eng/mozilla/4.6/relnotes/unix-4.6.html
For what it's worth, it does seem to render a little faster, but then I'm an impressionable litte sprite.
Nevermind the bogus claims this page is making about NT's superiority over Linux (Linux inherited UNIX' weak security because of buffer exploits? Like NT doesn't suffer from the same weakness?)--the fact remains that Mindcraft/Microsoft tried to pull a fast one and they were caught with their pants around their collective ankles. This challenge is nothing but kicking dust in the air until Microsoft and Mindcraft admit that they set the tests up to show Linux in a poor light. I am not willing to give Microsoft a pass on this one, and participating in their benchmark without forcing them to acknowledge the real reason for our dissatisfaction, instead of dismissing it as "attacking the messenger," would do a disservice to the Linux community. This would be like the archetypal battered wife returning to her abusive husband because he promises to clean up his act.
It should be noted that one of the side effects of the Mindcraft benchmarks was that some very effective optimizations for Apache were identified and, last I read, were going to be submitted to the Apache group. I imagine the benchmark rules will prohibit their use in the proposed benchmark.
The Linux community should respond in kind with a challenge to Microsoft admit that the first benchmark was a sham, that Mindcraft lied about the extent of their efforts to find help tuning Linux and Apache, and that Linux and Apache were de-tuned on the test machines. Last, but not least, they should fire Mindcraft.
AOL considering Linux device, sources say
Caldera adding Linux to set-top boxes
This one mentions that there was a company in the running for the AOL contract with a Linux-based set-top, but they lost out.
Time to subpoena Microsoft emails? Now you've got me thinking there must be an email somewhere on Microsoft's network that reads something like: "Bill, we've finally found a hardware configuration that is optimal for NT and produces sub-par results running Linux. We're confident that if we use this configuration for the Mindcraft benchmarks, Linux will come out the stinker."
Wouldn't it be interesting to see if Linux could meet or exceed the NT benchmark results on cheaper hardware? My guess is that it would be possible for a couple of experienced Linux admins to match the NT results with less hardware. While we're at it, let's use the entire benchmark suite, not just the static HTML, as the representative from the publisher suggested. That, or use Squid to cache the content, as disk I/O seems to be one of the major problems.
If you think anyone had any real input into the second set of Mindcraft benchmarks, go have a look at AC's commentary, entitled "Bruce Weiner: Lies, Damned Lies, Statistics":
http://linuxtoday.com/stories/5631.html
There have been a lot of comments from the Linux community regarding business models, that Microsoft can't compete with Linux because we're on different playing fields, etc. It's obvious by now that Microsoft aren't interested in competition, i.e. winning by providing a better value than their competitors. Instead, they seem to react to any threat to their market dominance by striking a Faustian bargain with the competitor then calling in their chips, draining the competitor's resources in a Vaporware arms race (the Borland vs. Microsoft OOP war?) or failing those, making their software incompatible with the competitor's products, and/or spreading mis-information about the threat.
Since it would be virtually impossible for Microsoft to "own" Linux, we can only assume they've already defaulted to FUD. The FUD strategy makes the "playing field" issue almost insignificant--Microsoft's marketing department could probably kill Brand X dishwashing liquid if Mr. Gates thought he would benefit. I haven't wanted to consider the tactics Microsoft might resort to in an attempt to supress Linux, but I think we've gotten a look at a few pages from their playbook already:
While Microsoft's representatives continue to claim that Linux is only a toy and that they're not worried about it, they've already started the FUD machine rolling. I wish Red Hat and some of the other "heavyweights" would pick up the ball and fight back with some real benchmarks. Why not duplicate the Mindcrafty benchmarks at IBM's labs, with hands-on assistance from a couple recognized NT performance-tuning experts, Linus and Alan on-site?
Personally, I think JWZ's departure and subsequent comments were all about sour grapes. I didn't expect mozilla to be "hacker friendly" for at least a year, I don't understand why anyone would have. Granted, the project has a bit of a "family atmosphere," but what else should we expect?
In hindsight, dumping the legacy rendering engine will probably be seen as the salvation of mozilla. It's smaller, faster and easier to maintain, at least according to the comments I've read from developers. After the code stabilizes we'll probably see gecko popping up in all kinds of applications and a lot more interest in development. I think mozilla is going to put the screws to Internet Exploder and will eventually become the de facto standard against which other browsers are measured.
Unlike the proprietary console games that Blockbuster rents -- which work almost flawlessly -- computer games are notoriously difficult to install and configure. And they often cause computer crashes.
Only because Windows is so poorly designed.
This is a bad idea and I doubt it will be any more successful than divx. Installing and running Windows games is a couple notches below rocket science, and I doubt there will be much support available from these guys (unless they want to go broke).
I don't think I want the remnants of ten or twenty Windows games (that I may never use again) lingering on my disk, either.
No, thanks.
Anyone with a browser knows that there have been two "obstacles" to Linux desktop domination, GUI and office applications. Red Hat have already done quite a bit to support the development of GNOME. I expect the first thing they'd do with with their new capital would be to put more resources into polishing up GNOME and development on the GNOME office applications. They'd have to do this in order to compete with the Corel Linux distro, which will eventually include KDE (a bit more mature than GNOME) and the Corel Suite port.