Re:Aren't APPS the real issue?
on
Halloween VII
·
· Score: 2
And you know what sort of alternative to Microsoft platform they come up with? Something that attempts to look and feel identical to its Microsoft counterpart!
If you build a car, it will look like a car! If you build an pickupit will look like a pickup. Ditto for desktops. I played around with my friend's iMac. Funny thing is, OSX looks like Windows! It has pretty wallpaper, pretty icons on the desktop, and a pretty panel on the bottom. Other than the menubar being on the desktop rather than the application, it might as well have been a WinXP theme.
To make a car not look like a car, you need to use a different number of wheels, put the dashboard in the back seat, etc. You might end up with a pickup, but the Slashdot crowd will complain that the front end still looks like a car and why can't we be innovative. To make KDE, GNOME, Aqua, etc., not look like the Windows desktop, you would have to remove the panel, or remove icons off the desktop, etc. This is going to have an impact on usability. And in any case, you will still have people bitching that it's a clone ("+1 for getting rid of the panel, but -5 for using toolbars in applications).
If you step out into the real world, you'll see that Chrysler owners don't bitch that their cars look like Fords. You don't see people complaining that this year's Dodge Trucks look like last years Chevy Trucks. "They're still putting the pickup bed in the back, how unoriginal can you get!"
But you can still tell a Ford from a BMW up close. They have different styles. Different lines. Different profiles. Despite the fact that they both have four wheels, hood, trunk and windows, no one is going to confuse the two. I never get confused between KDE, GNOME and Windows. If you get confused, it's because you're looking at them from too far away.
the real question, is it the best app for the job.
Maybe, maybe not. It depends on the job. The day when the Open Source community decides that one single email client is right for everyone is the day I start a new movement.
but the concept was that the operating system is basically a commodity when compared to application software.
Absolutely. I'm rather amazed that so few people realize this.
Case in point. Every server and desktop operating system, except those produced by Microsoft, are based on Unix. Linux, FreeBSD, OSX, BeOS, etc. I use FreeBSD but I might as well be using Linux or Solaris or IRIX because it's all the same from the application's perspective. My friend with the new iMac thinks its cool that he can use my Unix software natively.
Free Software Foundation General Counsel Eben Moglen reacts to Friday's U.S. v. Microsoft ruling and describes how it and 'trusted computing' will figure in formulating the next version of the GPL
Who would ever have thunk it. The FSF is reactionary. The Free Software Community shouldn't be reacting to Microsoft, the DOJ or anything else external to Free Software. That's only going to cause collateral damage. We should be running our own lives instead of letting Microsoft dictate our actions.
Funny, the KDE on my P4 1.8Ghz runs rings around the generic Win2K on the same system. Methinks you have settled for a generic x386 build from your distro's packaging team.
It's damn near time someone decided to scrap X and write KDE directly on top of the kernel.
But which kernel? Solaris? FreeBSD, IRIX? Linux? Probably the latter, I suppose. Not that you've excluded everyone else from using Linux, are you going to insist that GNOME and GNUStep be put in the kernel as well? What about XFCE? What about Blackbox, Windowmaker and IceWM?
And after Linus has a heart attack, who is going to revive him?
That's because Mono is supposed to be a Free implementation of.NET. And if you've ever been cornered by a.NET evangelist, you quickly learn to run away as fast as you can from anything remotely related to.NET or C#.
I prefer the branding. I had heard about Evolution. People said it was great. So I tried it. Ten seconds later it was "Oh my God it's installing all of GNOME! Stop stop stop! I didn't want GNOME! Aaargh!"
jokes apart, what do you think are the ways someone can contribute if he wanted to ?
Documentation. This includes writing documentation, going through the existing docs to make sure their current and cover all bases, and contributing to documentation tools.
Testing. Start using the snapshots or cvs and bang away at the daily code. Pick one application you really like (or feel needs a lot of help) and bang away at it from every direction every day. Then submit complete bug reports.
Artwork. Missing some icons for your favorite app? Make one and submit it.
Other areas to help exist as well, and are limited only by your imagination.
P.S: I already want to change the way some RPM installations work - they dont friggin create shortcuts on my start menu!
This is a distro specific problem, but that's no reason not to help out. Of course, working for free for a commercial distribution is not my idea of charity. It all depends on how big of an itch it is.
The article says that the US system does not represent the will of the voters best because of the Electoral College. Duh! It's not supposed to!
The Electoral College was set up to prevent the raw unfiltered will of the populace from ruling. It's purpose is to process and filter the will of the populace. This is a Good Thing(tm). The Electoral College is there for exactly the same reason that a President is being elected to begin with: the US political system is a representative republic, not a direct democracy.
The whims of the poplulace changes daily. A look at pre-election polls over a period of a few weeks demonstrates this. The Electoral College helps filter these mood swings out.
I realize that I am the last living person in the US who still likes the Electoral College, but that does not necessarily make me wrong.
Re:Make that "old skool BSD license"
on
Ghost for Unix
·
· Score: 3, Informative
If those notices are regarding the Regents of tht University of California, then they have already been rescinded.
Ultimately the only serious competition Microsoft faces at this time is from Linux.
Not at all. Linux has the best position TODAY, but anything can happen tomorrow. This industry changes too rapidly to make any predictions. A couple of scenarios:
A) People once dumped their inexpensive Apple II's, Commodores and TRS-80's for the more expensive IBM PC. The possiblity certainly exists that Mac OSX could take off in a big way, particularly since it is both easier to use than Windows, and more powerful.
B) Linux distros are merely repackagers of software, slapping a user "friendly" veneers over it. There's nothing stopping a third party from slapping a better veneer over FreeBSD or NetBSD. This is what Apple did, and they're doing great because of it.
Four years ago Linux was a hobby. Two years ago it looked like it might be a contender for the printserver market. The changes that can happen over two years in both technology and attitudes is amazing.
You misunderstand. It's considered a huge win to Microsoft because Bill Gates is not going to be executed and his head paraded around town. To most slashdotters, anything less than the total annihilation of Microsoft and certain of its corporate officers is just more evidence that the Bush Administration does not care about the little people.
It's neither the fault of the VCs and banks, nor the general public. Generally speaking, the market gets enough information that it works well. But in the case of the dotbomb bubble, accurate information was drowned out by hype.
I place the blame on the media, of which Dan's employer was the worst. The Murky News couldn't print rags-to-riches stories fast enough. The leitmotif of its business section was glowing praise of companies with no business plan other than to go IPO.
But with Open Source, the patches get applied to a product with a quick release turnover. I can go buy Redhat, Mandrake, SuSE, FreeBSD, etc, *NOW* and have a current system. Or I can choose to buy a three year old system knowing that I need three service packs just to get it up to par.
Releases every six to nine months are better than releases every three years. In addition, I can get patches for Open Source Software the day they are created, instead of several months down the road when Microsoft decides a issue the next service pack.
I expect some Linux distros have this. But I'm running FreeBSD, and it does. If you track -STABLE, you will pick up bug and security fixes for the kernel and userland without having to run an unstable system. For third party apps, portupgrade is an excellent tool to keep up to date.
It all hinges on cvsup. There aren't any nice GUI frontends to the process (some are being written as we speak), but it's trivial to put the process in a weekly cron job.
Slashdot Mirror
And you know what sort of alternative to Microsoft platform they come up with? Something that attempts to look and feel identical to its Microsoft counterpart!
If you build a car, it will look like a car! If you build an pickupit will look like a pickup. Ditto for desktops. I played around with my friend's iMac. Funny thing is, OSX looks like Windows! It has pretty wallpaper, pretty icons on the desktop, and a pretty panel on the bottom. Other than the menubar being on the desktop rather than the application, it might as well have been a WinXP theme.
To make a car not look like a car, you need to use a different number of wheels, put the dashboard in the back seat, etc. You might end up with a pickup, but the Slashdot crowd will complain that the front end still looks like a car and why can't we be innovative. To make KDE, GNOME, Aqua, etc., not look like the Windows desktop, you would have to remove the panel, or remove icons off the desktop, etc. This is going to have an impact on usability. And in any case, you will still have people bitching that it's a clone ("+1 for getting rid of the panel, but -5 for using toolbars in applications).
If you step out into the real world, you'll see that Chrysler owners don't bitch that their cars look like Fords. You don't see people complaining that this year's Dodge Trucks look like last years Chevy Trucks. "They're still putting the pickup bed in the back, how unoriginal can you get!"
But you can still tell a Ford from a BMW up close. They have different styles. Different lines. Different profiles. Despite the fact that they both have four wheels, hood, trunk and windows, no one is going to confuse the two. I never get confused between KDE, GNOME and Windows. If you get confused, it's because you're looking at them from too far away.
On another note it always amazes me that a significant segment of a human population will believe the unbelievable and doubt the obvious.
You mean like socialism versus capitalism?
the real question, is it the best app for the job.
Maybe, maybe not. It depends on the job. The day when the Open Source community decides that one single email client is right for everyone is the day I start a new movement.
but the concept was that the operating system is basically a commodity when compared to application software.
Absolutely. I'm rather amazed that so few people realize this.
Case in point. Every server and desktop operating system, except those produced by Microsoft, are based on Unix. Linux, FreeBSD, OSX, BeOS, etc. I use FreeBSD but I might as well be using Linux or Solaris or IRIX because it's all the same from the application's perspective. My friend with the new iMac thinks its cool that he can use my Unix software natively.
Windows is the odd man out.
how are they going to manage to avoid the thousands of #!/bin/bash scripts?
/bin. That's where sh and csh live. bash is NOT sh.
All those thousands of scripts need to be burned anyway. bash does not belong under
Free Software Foundation General Counsel Eben Moglen reacts to Friday's U.S. v. Microsoft ruling and describes how it and 'trusted computing' will figure in formulating the next version of the GPL
Who would ever have thunk it. The FSF is reactionary. The Free Software Community shouldn't be reacting to Microsoft, the DOJ or anything else external to Free Software. That's only going to cause collateral damage. We should be running our own lives instead of letting Microsoft dictate our actions.
Evolome?
Isn't that the stuff you take when you're constipated?
Funny, the KDE on my P4 1.8Ghz runs rings around the generic Win2K on the same system. Methinks you have settled for a generic x386 build from your distro's packaging team.
It's damn near time someone decided to scrap X and write KDE directly on top of the kernel.
But which kernel? Solaris? FreeBSD, IRIX? Linux? Probably the latter, I suppose. Not that you've excluded everyone else from using Linux, are you going to insist that GNOME and GNUStep be put in the kernel as well? What about XFCE? What about Blackbox, Windowmaker and IceWM?
And after Linus has a heart attack, who is going to revive him?
That's because Mono is supposed to be a Free implementation of .NET. And if you've ever been cornered by a .NET evangelist, you quickly learn to run away as fast as you can from anything remotely related to .NET or C#.
Apps written for the following projects:
...
GNU: gcc, g, g, g, g, g, g, g...
GNOME: gedit, g, g, g, g, g, g...
Windowmaker: wmmon, w, wm, w, wm, wm, w...
Blackbox: bbkeys, bb, bb, bb, bb...
Slashdot: Slashcode, slash, slash, dork, slash...
I prefer the branding. I had heard about Evolution. People said it was great. So I tried it. Ten seconds later it was "Oh my God it's installing all of GNOME! Stop stop stop! I didn't want GNOME! Aaargh!"
jokes apart, what do you think are the ways someone can contribute if he wanted to ?
Documentation. This includes writing documentation, going through the existing docs to make sure their current and cover all bases, and contributing to documentation tools.
Testing. Start using the snapshots or cvs and bang away at the daily code. Pick one application you really like (or feel needs a lot of help) and bang away at it from every direction every day. Then submit complete bug reports.
Artwork. Missing some icons for your favorite app? Make one and submit it.
Other areas to help exist as well, and are limited only by your imagination.
P.S: I already want to change the way some RPM installations work - they dont friggin create shortcuts on my start menu!
This is a distro specific problem, but that's no reason not to help out. Of course, working for free for a commercial distribution is not my idea of charity. It all depends on how big of an itch it is.
The article says that the US system does not represent the will of the voters best because of the Electoral College. Duh! It's not supposed to!
The Electoral College was set up to prevent the raw unfiltered will of the populace from ruling. It's purpose is to process and filter the will of the populace. This is a Good Thing(tm). The Electoral College is there for exactly the same reason that a President is being elected to begin with: the US political system is a representative republic, not a direct democracy.
The whims of the poplulace changes daily. A look at pre-election polls over a period of a few weeks demonstrates this. The Electoral College helps filter these mood swings out.
I realize that I am the last living person in the US who still likes the Electoral College, but that does not necessarily make me wrong.
If those notices are regarding the Regents of tht University of California, then they have already been rescinded.
Ultimately the only serious competition Microsoft faces at this time is from Linux.
Not at all. Linux has the best position TODAY, but anything can happen tomorrow. This industry changes too rapidly to make any predictions. A couple of scenarios:
A) People once dumped their inexpensive Apple II's, Commodores and TRS-80's for the more expensive IBM PC. The possiblity certainly exists that Mac OSX could take off in a big way, particularly since it is both easier to use than Windows, and more powerful.
B) Linux distros are merely repackagers of software, slapping a user "friendly" veneers over it. There's nothing stopping a third party from slapping a better veneer over FreeBSD or NetBSD. This is what Apple did, and they're doing great because of it.
Four years ago Linux was a hobby. Two years ago it looked like it might be a contender for the printserver market. The changes that can happen over two years in both technology and attitudes is amazing.
You misunderstand. It's considered a huge win to Microsoft because Bill Gates is not going to be executed and his head paraded around town. To most slashdotters, anything less than the total annihilation of Microsoft and certain of its corporate officers is just more evidence that the Bush Administration does not care about the little people.
CVSup has a GUI. It isn't a particuarly good one, but it is there.
I was referring to a GUI for the entire *process* of upgrading the system.
It's neither the fault of the VCs and banks, nor the general public. Generally speaking, the market gets enough information that it works well. But in the case of the dotbomb bubble, accurate information was drowned out by hype.
I place the blame on the media, of which Dan's employer was the worst. The Murky News couldn't print rags-to-riches stories fast enough. The leitmotif of its business section was glowing praise of companies with no business plan other than to go IPO.
All software needs to be patched. It's a given.
But with Open Source, the patches get applied to a product with a quick release turnover. I can go buy Redhat, Mandrake, SuSE, FreeBSD, etc, *NOW* and have a current system. Or I can choose to buy a three year old system knowing that I need three service packs just to get it up to par.
Releases every six to nine months are better than releases every three years. In addition, I can get patches for Open Source Software the day they are created, instead of several months down the road when Microsoft decides a issue the next service pack.
I expect some Linux distros have this. But I'm running FreeBSD, and it does. If you track -STABLE, you will pick up bug and security fixes for the kernel and userland without having to run an unstable system. For third party apps, portupgrade is an excellent tool to keep up to date.
It all hinges on cvsup. There aren't any nice GUI frontends to the process (some are being written as we speak), but it's trivial to put the process in a weekly cron job.
Because that's how we speak in 'Merica. When someone asks me when I'll visit next, I say "November second", and not "second of November".
Please don't make me laugh! I just got my stitches out and it hurts!
but if you remove the library how useful is a program that can't run?
Completely irrelevant. Dependency != Derivation. If there is no derivation then copyright law, and thus the GPL, does not apply.
This is actually a myth. Yes, the FSF believes it. No, no one is willing to challenge them in court. But dependency does not define derivation.
as opposed to QT which is GPLed
Qt is dual licensed under the QPL and GPL. The dual licensing means that it is NOT viral.