I think a lot of hardcore Netscape/Mozilla users avoid sites that perform detailed information-mining like the plague.
They also avoid fluffy self-serving websites whose sole purpose is to see how much crud they can shove in it before it implodes from a lack of content. Avoid them and HitBox will never count you.
Well, I'm running it on my Windows partition at work. Why? Several reasons, all trivial. The largest of the trivial reasons is that IT will be less upset with me using Netscape than with Mozilla.
But to be fair about the whole thing, I'm running Mozilla under Solaris.
This is not the first time a meteorite hit a person, and the person survived.
It depends on the mass of the meteorite. Too small and it burns up. Too big and it creates a tourist trap in Arizona. But at the right mass, it will hit like a rock dropped from an airplane. That's because the atmosphere will slow it down. It WILL hurt when it hits. But it's entirely possible that it can hit a girl's foot without removing it.
But what about your high school physic's teacher? He too busy reading physics texts and not enough time looking at the real world. In college we performed the classic physics experiment that no one ever performs: we dropped a watermelon and a grape from the top of a building. The standard physics text says that they will both hit at the same time. But the watermelon hit first! I leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out why...
It was a snarky little jibe whose only purpose was to claim that HIPPA prevented the use of Windows.
Everywhere I look in the medical industry I see Windows. From diagnostics, review stations, records, hospital servers, etc. Even bloody EKG machines! It's ubiquitous. Rule of thumb: If QNX or Solaris is the appropriate solution, expect the system to be running WinXP/Embedded or Win2K instead.
If HIPPA is going to prevent the use of Windows, expect to see a *major* shakeup in the industry. Expect to see the medical divisions of Philips, GE and Siemens to implode into nothing.
When RMS keeps hitting me over the head with a baseball bat shouting "it's the freedom stupid!" I can only assume he means that Free Software is about Freedom.
You and I are meant to be free; governments, as the executors of the will of the people, are not.
No problem there. I agree.
We do have the right to force our government to choose Open Source.
But who do you mean by "we"? Just you and I? If so, then I must seriously disagree. If you mean those fifty odd people that marched in San Fransisco two weeks ago, then I must also disagree.
I do not believe in the tyranny of the majority. I believe even less in the tryanny of the minority. Before we force the government to our will, be must have sufficient cause. While I believe that there is sufficient cause for the government to cease using products from a convicted monopolist, I don't think there is sufficient cause to bar proprietary software completely.
On the other hand, we do have sufficient cause to force the government to adhere to free and open software standards in its dealings with the public. And we do have sufficient cause to force the government to use proper competitive bidding based on total cost of ownership. So let's start with that.
If HP doesn't ship it people will be forced to buy it.
Why do I get the feeling that you want Microsoft to keep its monopoly? Are you afraid that Microsoft will use this as evidence of non-monopoly? Are you afraid that HP will take away the target of your hatred? I'm just guessing here, so I could be wrong.
I think it's a Good Thing(tm) that HP is shipping sometInstead of predicting dire consequences, I'm going to praise their decision.
We really got off topic here. Let me get back to your orginal claims (paraphrased):
1) Trolltech is trying to, or has to ability to, create a monopoly through its dual licensing scheme.
The fact that one of these licenses is the GPL means that such a situation cannot happen. The GPL may lock out proprietary developers, but it does not lock out Free Software developers.
Am I going to sympathize with pay-for proprietary developer who has to pay for Qt/Embedded? Hell no!
2) If Qt catches on in the desktop it will harm Linux.
It already did catch on. So I guess Linux is harmed, and it will only be a matter of time before it joins *BSD in Dying.
Well, for one, if you have an MP3 file, you need MP3 to play it. I thought that was obvious, but I guess not.
If you're a music producer, then feel free to release all your creations as Ogg Vorbis. But if instead you are a music consumer, you're still going to need MP3 as long as music is commonly distributed in that format online.
"...people of a particular religious affiliation do not provide the correct information, certain facilities might not be built that otherwise would be."
Not being an Aussie, I seems to me that this quote implies that the Australian government is in the business of funding religious facilities. At the minimum is seems to imply that you will be either taxed or granted taxes depending on your religious affiliation.
Yup. That's why I use on iPaq. In fact, I have used X11 on machines that are much less powerful than the iPaq.
And you're saying your iPaq is more responsive with X11 than without?
Troll Tech "replaced" the standard Linux windowing system, X11, with their system, excluding all other toolkits but theirs.
Huh? What handheld does Trolltech sell that they would even be in a position to replace the "standard" Linux windowing system?
People don't have to pay for developing for Win32, OSX, or Palm. They can use the native APIs freely, or they can use any of a number of cross-platform libraries.
First, Qt is not an operating system. If you don't like Qt, you don't have to use it. You've already stated that your iPaq has X11, so why don't you use straight Xlib?
Second, go try programming a Win32 GUI application without spending any money. If you find a way, please let me know, because I can't think of any.
Qt is expensive.
Go price out competitive crossplatform application frameworks of equal quality. Still not convinced. Go check out what the standard tools for any other trade cost. See what a hardware engineer's tools cost. See what an auto mechanic's tools cost. See what a carpenter's tools cost.
Qt still accounts for only a small fraction of Linux GUI applications.
It still accounts for a very significant fraction. Like it or not, KDE has caught on. It is not going to go away. Neither will Qt.
Troll Tech has tried to monopolize the market for Linux based handhelds by replacing X11 with a framebuffer-based system (which is less efficient to boot).
Have you ever tried to fit X11 into a handheld then had it be responsive afterwards? Which of Trolltech's competitors does not use a framebuffer? What handheld had an X11 system to begin with so that Trolltech could "replace" it?
Authors of GPL'ed software using Troll Tech's system are OK, but other kinds of free software, or commercial developers, need to pay more than they would for GUI development on just about any other platform.
As a BSD developer, this annoys me. But so what.
To quote RMS: "we are now seeking more libraries to release under the ordinary GPL."
If Qt/Embedded catches on widely, you can kiss handheld Linux as an affordable commercial platform goodbye.
Why? If you are selling [sic] Free Software, then Qt/Embedded is Free. If you're selling proprietary software, then you have to treat Qt/Embeddedlike any other commercial toolkit, and pay for it.
Commercial Qt/Embedded may put a halt to penny-ante shareware coders trying to make a buck off their weekend hobby, but the licensing cost is actually quite reasonable for professional developers.
And if Qt catches on on the desktop, it will harm Linux as well.
Hate to break the news to you, but it already did catch on. It's called KDE. I understand it's wildly popular.
I saw "Revolution OS" yesterday. I was very surprised at the range of personal appearances. RMS was the only one that looked the sterotypicl hacker. ESR and BP looked like typical geeks. But Michael Tiemann and Larry Augustin looked like suits, dressed like suites, but talked like hackers. They don't fit the mold at all.
And we all know that Linus looks so much like a family man (well duh!) that no one would ever suspect him of hacking code if they ran across him on the street.
Why is this a drawback? It makes it harder for people to rope you into meetings.:)
It also makes it harder for me to rope people into meetings. Frankly, I didn't miss Calendar at all until just a few months ago. Then I get tasked with heading up two projects, and now I need it.
Wether or not you're dealing with an instanciated object (Java object that is) when you do an addition is both irrelevant and uninteresting. (Unless you happen to be a computer scientist focusing on virtual machines or compilers.)
That was my whole point. Some things that look really good in the academic world, don't always work the way you want in the real world.
So let's see, you're creating the problem yourself by locking yourself into an incompatible OS, but are trying to blame others.
I see nothing wrong with walking into a closet and locking the door behind me, as long as I get to choose the closet. I've chosen FreeBSD on my workstation (with management's permission) because I am doing Unix development for a Unix product in a Unix shop. Using Windows with Exceed, Reflections or Cygwin is so horribly painful for this purpose that I choose not to do it. The only drawback I have found so far is the lack of a Calendar compliant client.
Recall the Ask Slashdot's primary question: why isn't there an open source solution to this problem yet? Ximian Connector is not an open source solution. It is not open. It is not free. It's not even semi-free. It is proprietary payware.
But don't get me wrong. My gripe is a minor gripe, not a major one. And it is directed at our corporate IT and not Ximian.
a) Proprietary. b) Money will have to come out of my own pocket. c) Is not supported on my system. d) I am not going to switch operating systems. e) All Of The Above means that I cannot try it out first to see if it works.
I don't hate Microsoft, I just hate the lock in. Why should I exchange [sic] one set of shackles for another? I'm not looking for a proprietary solution, I'm looking for an Open Source solution.
p.s. Does anyone other than myself find it cynically ironic that Nat and Miguel are now selling proprietary software?
I can't think of anything Exchange/Outlook does that a Notes client/server pair doesn't do.
I know one thing: It supports Exchange. Sounds stupid, but it's not. If you have the opportunity to replace your entire messaging/calendaring infrastructure, then by all means do not use Exchange. But if you can't then forget it.
The IT department of my work set up Exchange. I am not a decision maker here, so I can't change this. And I run FreeBSD. I can get and send email, but I can't use the normal mailing lists, company address books, or Calendar. The latter is the nasty one. If I was a manager, I would have no choice but to use Windows/Outlook. As a regular coder, I have a bit of leeway, but I know sometime in the future someone of importance is going to schedule me for a mandatory meeting, and forget to check that box that sends me an email. And then I'll be looking for work.
What's the obvious thing to do here? Ignore the problem. I'm absolutely serious.
Either you ignore the patents or you stop coding. There is no other solution. You can't be a patent lawyer and a coder at the same time. You don't have enough time to do both. And unless you're a patent lawyer, you will never reasonably know that you haven't infringed on something.
I strongly suspect, to the point of certain belief, that 99% of the patents in question are bogus and that Linus and Co. would win a court case. But again, there's not enough time in the world to both go to court and to code. Of the remaining 1%, you don't know which ones they are. The only way to avoid them is to remove all suspect code. You can't simply recode it in another algorithm, because that other algorithm may be patented as well. So you remove the code and are left with nothing more than a README file.
There are times when you must ignore the law of man and obey the law of God. And the law of God says that you only have 24 hours in a day. If you're going to be a coder, you have to ignore patents.
But then it's not an object! I thought everything was supposed to be an object.
The Boolean class contains methods for manipulating booleans
Sounds like an adaptor class to me. The bool itself is still a non-object. If you make a string of bools, that string is not a bool, it's a string of bools. Adaptor classes are handy for such cases, but don't confuse the wrapper with the contents.
It doesn't do anything that keyboard accelerators don't do, unless you can't type a single key accurately.
You mean use a keyboard? You have got to be kidding! That's absolutely jurassic! No one uses the keyboard anymore but introvert Linux geeks jacking off to the command line.
Seriously, I'm with you. I just don't get the idea behind mouse gestures, pie menus and all the other crap getting in the way of usability.
Here's a usability idea: use the mouse intelligently. Keep one hand on a decent three button mouse that fits your palm, the other hand on the keyboard, and you have LMB, CMB, RMB, Ctrl, Alt, Shift and Meta to do all your work. All you need is for the application to support it, or your system to map the actions to what you want. Think about it. You never have to move your hands (if you have a trackball, that's literal), you'll learn it quickly, and you'll never accidently perform a gesture if you sneeze at the wrong time.
Slashdot Mirror
I think a lot of hardcore Netscape/Mozilla users avoid sites that perform detailed information-mining like the plague.
They also avoid fluffy self-serving websites whose sole purpose is to see how much crud they can shove in it before it implodes from a lack of content. Avoid them and HitBox will never count you.
Well, I'm running it on my Windows partition at work. Why? Several reasons, all trivial. The largest of the trivial reasons is that IT will be less upset with me using Netscape than with Mozilla.
But to be fair about the whole thing, I'm running Mozilla under Solaris.
This is not the first time a meteorite hit a person, and the person survived.
It depends on the mass of the meteorite. Too small and it burns up. Too big and it creates a tourist trap in Arizona. But at the right mass, it will hit like a rock dropped from an airplane. That's because the atmosphere will slow it down. It WILL hurt when it hits. But it's entirely possible that it can hit a girl's foot without removing it.
But what about your high school physic's teacher? He too busy reading physics texts and not enough time looking at the real world. In college we performed the classic physics experiment that no one ever performs: we dropped a watermelon and a grape from the top of a building. The standard physics text says that they will both hit at the same time. But the watermelon hit first! I leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure out why...
It was a snarky little jibe whose only purpose was to claim that HIPPA prevented the use of Windows.
Everywhere I look in the medical industry I see Windows. From diagnostics, review stations, records, hospital servers, etc. Even bloody EKG machines! It's ubiquitous. Rule of thumb: If QNX or Solaris is the appropriate solution, expect the system to be running WinXP/Embedded or Win2K instead.
If HIPPA is going to prevent the use of Windows, expect to see a *major* shakeup in the industry. Expect to see the medical divisions of Philips, GE and Siemens to implode into nothing.
When RMS keeps hitting me over the head with a baseball bat shouting "it's the freedom stupid!" I can only assume he means that Free Software is about Freedom.
You and I are meant to be free; governments, as the executors of the will of the people, are not.
No problem there. I agree.
We do have the right to force our government to choose Open Source.
But who do you mean by "we"? Just you and I? If so, then I must seriously disagree. If you mean those fifty odd people that marched in San Fransisco two weeks ago, then I must also disagree.
I do not believe in the tyranny of the majority. I believe even less in the tryanny of the minority. Before we force the government to our will, be must have sufficient cause. While I believe that there is sufficient cause for the government to cease using products from a convicted monopolist, I don't think there is sufficient cause to bar proprietary software completely.
On the other hand, we do have sufficient cause to force the government to adhere to free and open software standards in its dealings with the public. And we do have sufficient cause to force the government to use proper competitive bidding based on total cost of ownership. So let's start with that.
Where do you guys get the New Revised FSF Dictionary of the English Language? I can't find it in bookstores anywhere!
A constraint of choice is not freedom.
Please note that this is the FIRST definition of freedom in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.
If HP doesn't ship it people will be forced to buy it.
Why do I get the feeling that you want Microsoft to keep its monopoly? Are you afraid that Microsoft will use this as evidence of non-monopoly? Are you afraid that HP will take away the target of your hatred? I'm just guessing here, so I could be wrong.
I think it's a Good Thing(tm) that HP is shipping sometInstead of predicting dire consequences, I'm going to praise their decision.
Good job Hewlett Packard!
We really got off topic here. Let me get back to your orginal claims (paraphrased):
1) Trolltech is trying to, or has to ability to, create a monopoly through its dual licensing scheme.
The fact that one of these licenses is the GPL means that such a situation cannot happen. The GPL may lock out proprietary developers, but it does not lock out Free Software developers.
Am I going to sympathize with pay-for proprietary developer who has to pay for Qt/Embedded? Hell no!
2) If Qt catches on in the desktop it will harm Linux.
It already did catch on. So I guess Linux is harmed, and it will only be a matter of time before it joins *BSD in Dying.
What can MP3 do for me that Ogg Vorbis can't?
Well, for one, if you have an MP3 file, you need MP3 to play it. I thought that was obvious, but I guess not.
If you're a music producer, then feel free to release all your creations as Ogg Vorbis. But if instead you are a music consumer, you're still going to need MP3 as long as music is commonly distributed in that format online.
"...people of a particular religious affiliation do not provide the correct information, certain facilities might not be built that otherwise would be."
Not being an Aussie, I seems to me that this quote implies that the Australian government is in the business of funding religious facilities. At the minimum is seems to imply that you will be either taxed or granted taxes depending on your religious affiliation.
Yup. That's why I use on iPaq. In fact, I have used X11 on machines that are much less powerful than the iPaq.
And you're saying your iPaq is more responsive with X11 than without?
Troll Tech "replaced" the standard Linux windowing system, X11, with their system, excluding all other toolkits but theirs.
Huh? What handheld does Trolltech sell that they would even be in a position to replace the "standard" Linux windowing system?
People don't have to pay for developing for Win32, OSX, or Palm. They can use the native APIs freely, or they can use any of a number of cross-platform libraries.
First, Qt is not an operating system. If you don't like Qt, you don't have to use it. You've already stated that your iPaq has X11, so why don't you use straight Xlib?
Second, go try programming a Win32 GUI application without spending any money. If you find a way, please let me know, because I can't think of any.
Qt is expensive.
Go price out competitive crossplatform application frameworks of equal quality. Still not convinced. Go check out what the standard tools for any other trade cost. See what a hardware engineer's tools cost. See what an auto mechanic's tools cost. See what a carpenter's tools cost.
Qt still accounts for only a small fraction of Linux GUI applications.
It still accounts for a very significant fraction. Like it or not, KDE has caught on. It is not going to go away. Neither will Qt.
Troll Tech has tried to monopolize the market for Linux based handhelds by replacing X11 with a framebuffer-based system (which is less efficient to boot).
Have you ever tried to fit X11 into a handheld then had it be responsive afterwards? Which of Trolltech's competitors does not use a framebuffer? What handheld had an X11 system to begin with so that Trolltech could "replace" it?
Authors of GPL'ed software using Troll Tech's system are OK, but other kinds of free software, or commercial developers, need to pay more than they would for GUI development on just about any other platform.
As a BSD developer, this annoys me. But so what.
To quote RMS: "we are now seeking more libraries to release under the ordinary GPL."
If Qt/Embedded catches on widely, you can kiss handheld Linux as an affordable commercial platform goodbye.
Why? If you are selling [sic] Free Software, then Qt/Embedded is Free. If you're selling proprietary software, then you have to treat Qt/Embeddedlike any other commercial toolkit, and pay for it.
Commercial Qt/Embedded may put a halt to penny-ante shareware coders trying to make a buck off their weekend hobby, but the licensing cost is actually quite reasonable for professional developers.
And if Qt catches on on the desktop, it will harm Linux as well.
Hate to break the news to you, but it already did catch on. It's called KDE. I understand it's wildly popular.
I believe Webmin was theirs.
I saw "Revolution OS" yesterday. I was very surprised at the range of personal appearances. RMS was the only one that looked the sterotypicl hacker. ESR and BP looked like typical geeks. But Michael Tiemann and Larry Augustin looked like suits, dressed like suites, but talked like hackers. They don't fit the mold at all.
And we all know that Linus looks so much like a family man (well duh!) that no one would ever suspect him of hacking code if they ran across him on the street.
It is no longer necessary at all to be a geek to use it, understand it, and implement it.
How about to grok it?
You don't need a pony tail, beard and fading USENIX tshirt to be a geek. You just need to love the guts of technology.
Knowing that BSD and other *nix systems usually don't like hard power-downs
Correction. Most *nix file systems don't like hard power-downs. The OS itself figures you know what you're doing.
But be that as it may, most embedded devices either have a RAM filesystem powered by battery, or don't really have a hard power-down at all.
Why is this a drawback? It makes it harder for people to rope you into meetings. :)
It also makes it harder for me to rope people into meetings. Frankly, I didn't miss Calendar at all until just a few months ago. Then I get tasked with heading up two projects, and now I need it.
Wether or not you're dealing with an instanciated object (Java object that is) when you do an addition is both irrelevant and uninteresting. (Unless you happen to be a computer scientist focusing on virtual machines or compilers.)
That was my whole point. Some things that look really good in the academic world, don't always work the way you want in the real world.
So let's see, you're creating the problem yourself by locking yourself into an incompatible OS, but are trying to blame others.
I see nothing wrong with walking into a closet and locking the door behind me, as long as I get to choose the closet. I've chosen FreeBSD on my workstation (with management's permission) because I am doing Unix development for a Unix product in a Unix shop. Using Windows with Exceed, Reflections or Cygwin is so horribly painful for this purpose that I choose not to do it. The only drawback I have found so far is the lack of a Calendar compliant client.
Recall the Ask Slashdot's primary question: why isn't there an open source solution to this problem yet? Ximian Connector is not an open source solution. It is not open. It is not free. It's not even semi-free. It is proprietary payware.
But don't get me wrong. My gripe is a minor gripe, not a major one. And it is directed at our corporate IT and not Ximian.
I'll have to skip this. Reasons are as follows:
a) Proprietary.
b) Money will have to come out of my own pocket.
c) Is not supported on my system.
d) I am not going to switch operating systems.
e) All Of The Above means that I cannot try it out first to see if it works.
I don't hate Microsoft, I just hate the lock in. Why should I exchange [sic] one set of shackles for another? I'm not looking for a proprietary solution, I'm looking for an Open Source solution.
p.s. Does anyone other than myself find it cynically ironic that Nat and Miguel are now selling proprietary software?
I can't think of anything Exchange/Outlook does that a Notes client/server pair doesn't do.
I know one thing: It supports Exchange. Sounds stupid, but it's not. If you have the opportunity to replace your entire messaging/calendaring infrastructure, then by all means do not use Exchange. But if you can't then forget it.
The IT department of my work set up Exchange. I am not a decision maker here, so I can't change this. And I run FreeBSD. I can get and send email, but I can't use the normal mailing lists, company address books, or Calendar. The latter is the nasty one. If I was a manager, I would have no choice but to use Windows/Outlook. As a regular coder, I have a bit of leeway, but I know sometime in the future someone of importance is going to schedule me for a mandatory meeting, and forget to check that box that sends me an email. And then I'll be looking for work.
What's the obvious thing to do here? Ignore the problem. I'm absolutely serious.
Either you ignore the patents or you stop coding. There is no other solution. You can't be a patent lawyer and a coder at the same time. You don't have enough time to do both. And unless you're a patent lawyer, you will never reasonably know that you haven't infringed on something.
I strongly suspect, to the point of certain belief, that 99% of the patents in question are bogus and that Linus and Co. would win a court case. But again, there's not enough time in the world to both go to court and to code. Of the remaining 1%, you don't know which ones they are. The only way to avoid them is to remove all suspect code. You can't simply recode it in another algorithm, because that other algorithm may be patented as well. So you remove the code and are left with nothing more than a README file.
There are times when you must ignore the law of man and obey the law of God. And the law of God says that you only have 24 hours in a day. If you're going to be a coder, you have to ignore patents.
For plain math, use plain ints.
But then it's not an object! I thought everything was supposed to be an object.
The Boolean class contains methods for manipulating booleans
Sounds like an adaptor class to me. The bool itself is still a non-object. If you make a string of bools, that string is not a bool, it's a string of bools. Adaptor classes are handy for such cases, but don't confuse the wrapper with the contents.
It doesn't do anything that keyboard accelerators don't do, unless you can't type a single key accurately.
You mean use a keyboard? You have got to be kidding! That's absolutely jurassic! No one uses the keyboard anymore but introvert Linux geeks jacking off to the command line.
Seriously, I'm with you. I just don't get the idea behind mouse gestures, pie menus and all the other crap getting in the way of usability.
Here's a usability idea: use the mouse intelligently. Keep one hand on a decent three button mouse that fits your palm, the other hand on the keyboard, and you have LMB, CMB, RMB, Ctrl, Alt, Shift and Meta to do all your work. All you need is for the application to support it, or your system to map the actions to what you want. Think about it. You never have to move your hands (if you have a trackball, that's literal), you'll learn it quickly, and you'll never accidently perform a gesture if you sneeze at the wrong time.