This is so typical of what is wrong with the open source movement. In real life (which was what TFA was about) most people can't afford to "become part of the community" because they have real, actual work to do. I use at least ten applications on a very regular basis. I most certainly can't afford to "be part of the community" for all of those. In the real world, what counts is how well stuff actually works right now, not how good they could possibly become in the future if everybody would just help out. Sorry, but that's the way it is.
Nice the way you make it sound like you do have the opportunity to make decisions about the direction of proprietary software. I take it you're on the Adobe UI Review board, then?
I know Photoshop stopped going in the direction I wanted it to go after about version 4.0.
The required 'features' you give are the exact things that drove me away from windows. Non standardised vendor drivers. Vendor drivers that don't share a common configuration/access subsystem. Vendor drivers that deliberately restrict functionality. Vendor drivers that only work with a whitelist of hardware. Poorly written drivers that don't get updated and don't allow people to continue development.
Poor software installers. Software that doesn't have any sort of update mechanism. Software that defeats the whole point of dynamic libraries by using their own private bundled version. Installers that just overwrite the current version of a library on your system to ensure that everything 'just works' (yeah, we all love that phrase). Software which opens security holes because of these actions.
Centralised software distribution solves all these. It is the future. Development is where the distributed model comes in.
C++ support. It doesn't work. It's unbelievably slow
KDE is a very fast desktop, even on my main PC which is six years old. It's written entirely in C++. This is where I'm starting to smell the bullshit.
Just try distributing a C++ application on Linux without getting all N^2 distros involved or requiring the user to know what a compiler is.
Skype manage it quite well.
unfortunately there's a general attitude of "who cares" in the community with regards to most of these issues
These issues aren't getting 'fixed' because it's an attitude of "You're wrong.". Everyone's heard what you have to say (believe me) and most have failed to take it on board for a reason.
I have a feeling that unless some major changes are made to the X Window System (and maybe Linux drivers) that WINE will not catch up with WindowsXP and DirectX
I have a feeling you don't know much about the subject and so you're just picking on the components that are the standard whipping boys for other people who don't know what they're talking about.
And so we have this huge cyclical myth propogating that for instance 'X sucks'.
These are benchmarks done by developers for developers. They're hardly going to spend thousands of dollars going out and buying the new versions of everything just so they can run their tests.
Also, the point of these benchmarks is they're repeated regularly to compare how wine has changed. To make those results meaningful you have to run the same software from the previous tests.
Well said. In my view, Sun's latest FOSS lovefest has been all about releasing red herrings to try and disperse some of the momentum around existing projects.
Ah yeah - it just sends shivers down my spine to think that evil federal government is getting a higher proportion of my money, even if I'm paying out less. I mean, what has the damn government ever done for me?
Stable kernel interfaces are dumb. But from what I can see, you're someone who wants linux to have to stick to ten year old design mistakes to maintain 'consistency'.
That's why you're seeing constant local kernel exploits. They're adding features too fast to consider the ramifications.
I'm sure it would be much better if you were in charge.
ps- Link is quite technical - you will probably be more interested in complaining than reading it.
The only wifi chip that I know doesn't have a Free driver is the broadcom. And now even that's not true with this which has recently become just about usable.
Off the top of my head the following chipsets have Free linux drivers available: Texas Instruments ACX100/ACX111, RaLink 2400/2500/2570, Intel ipw2100/ipw2200, Realtek rtl8180, Atmel at76c5xxx, and the ADMtek adm8211. There are one or two more, but I can't remember them right now.
There are also non-Free (despite the fact that the site says they're GPL) but otherwise decent drivers for the Atheros chipsets provided by the madwifi project.
I don't know where you got your information from, but you're very wrong. And the future of Linux wifi support is looking far stronger than any other OS with the new generic software 802.11 stack that's just gone into the kernel.
I've always thought it would be great if the standard wallsocket had cheap ammeters on each outlet. That would be the way to stop people losing track of where they're wasting energy.
As long as the ammeters themselves weren't significantly wasteful, I can only see it being a good thing.
It's just doing a WebObjects query for related albums.
And in the process, telling them what you're listening to.
There's more information stored via the Google cookie, and where is the Slashdot outrage over that? That information has been confirmed to be stored indefinitely, along with your email in Gmail. Oh no, Slashdot is storing your IP in its weblogs! In fact, every server does!
That's completely different, because people expect that to happen. They're using the internet. People don't expect a music playing application to be internet connected (unless they explicitly choose to use the store).
It becomes subversive (and annoying) when something which doesn't have a particular obvious need to connect to the internet does so and doesn't make the user aware of it or doesn't give them the choice to prevent it.
This guy is clearly quite confused about a lot of aspects of computer graphics. I think it's a fair bet to say he's not a graphics programmer. Is this a typical quality article from tom's hardware?
He continually mixes up the significance of the capabilities of the shading languages, the 'quality settings' of random games, and just the sheer speeds of the cards.
Doesn't have a great grasp of english either (not that my german is that good to be fair).
Well no, my point was that this guy was trying to plug Macintoshes without any reason for plugging them. Plugging them for being just as bad as Windows.
Slashdot Mirror
Digikam.
Nice the way you make it sound like you do have the opportunity to make decisions about the direction of proprietary software. I take it you're on the Adobe UI Review board, then?
I know Photoshop stopped going in the direction I wanted it to go after about version 4.0.
Poor software installers. Software that doesn't have any sort of update mechanism. Software that defeats the whole point of dynamic libraries by using their own private bundled version. Installers that just overwrite the current version of a library on your system to ensure that everything 'just works' (yeah, we all love that phrase). Software which opens security holes because of these actions.
Centralised software distribution solves all these. It is the future. Development is where the distributed model comes in.
KDE is a very fast desktop, even on my main PC which is six years old. It's written entirely in C++. This is where I'm starting to smell the bullshit.
Skype manage it quite well.
These issues aren't getting 'fixed' because it's an attitude of "You're wrong.". Everyone's heard what you have to say (believe me) and most have failed to take it on board for a reason.
If you want an example of Sun 'usability', look at the Java Desktop System. (You'll probably be able to find a review somewhere)
And so we have this huge cyclical myth propogating that for instance 'X sucks'.
Well done. Have you ever done a class in number theory?
These are benchmarks done by developers for developers. They're hardly going to spend thousands of dollars going out and buying the new versions of everything just so they can run their tests.
Also, the point of these benchmarks is they're repeated regularly to compare how wine has changed. To make those results meaningful you have to run the same software from the previous tests.
Well said. In my view, Sun's latest FOSS lovefest has been all about releasing red herrings to try and disperse some of the momentum around existing projects.
I think you're very confused about the difference between copyright & trademarks. And a bunch of other things.
The code for Win2K ("NT5") was "all new" also.
This is the same marketing schtick they used last time.
Ah yeah - it just sends shivers down my spine to think that evil federal government is getting a higher proportion of my money, even if I'm paying out less. I mean, what has the damn government ever done for me?
iTunes? hah!
I don't know of any Free firmware. Especially for wifi cards.
Except for the prism54 usb firmware which is being reverse engineered from scratch.
Zydas! I've just remembered it. I knew it began with a z.
Zydas zd1201.
Stable kernel interfaces are dumb. But from what I can see, you're someone who wants linux to have to stick to ten year old design mistakes to maintain 'consistency'.
I'm sure it would be much better if you were in charge.
ps- Link is quite technical - you will probably be more interested in complaining than reading it.
Madwifi drivers aren't fully open. They have a binary only 'HAL' that does the real work internally.
If atheros disappear overnight, the next time the kernel undergoes a significant change, you've lost support for your card.
Same goes if you want to run it on some sort of exotic architecture.
I think you'll find that my list covers almost every wifi chipset you'll find sold today.
The only wifi chip that I know doesn't have a Free driver is the broadcom. And now even that's not true with this which has recently become just about usable.
Off the top of my head the following chipsets have Free linux drivers available: Texas Instruments ACX100/ACX111, RaLink 2400/2500/2570, Intel ipw2100/ipw2200, Realtek rtl8180, Atmel at76c5xxx, and the ADMtek adm8211. There are one or two more, but I can't remember them right now.
There are also non-Free (despite the fact that the site says they're GPL) but otherwise decent drivers for the Atheros chipsets provided by the madwifi project.
I don't know where you got your information from, but you're very wrong. And the future of Linux wifi support is looking far stronger than any other OS with the new generic software 802.11 stack that's just gone into the kernel.
I've always thought it would be great if the standard wallsocket had cheap ammeters on each outlet. That would be the way to stop people losing track of where they're wasting energy.
As long as the ammeters themselves weren't significantly wasteful, I can only see it being a good thing.
Also, I'm outraged that the so-called 'professors' of physics don't give fair coverage of the theories of the time cube.
Honestly. Professors - what do they know?
That's completely different, because people expect that to happen. They're using the internet. People don't expect a music playing application to be internet connected (unless they explicitly choose to use the store).
It becomes subversive (and annoying) when something which doesn't have a particular obvious need to connect to the internet does so and doesn't make the user aware of it or doesn't give them the choice to prevent it.
This guy is clearly quite confused about a lot of aspects of computer graphics. I think it's a fair bet to say he's not a graphics programmer. Is this a typical quality article from tom's hardware?
He continually mixes up the significance of the capabilities of the shading languages, the 'quality settings' of random games, and just the sheer speeds of the cards.
Doesn't have a great grasp of english either (not that my german is that good to be fair).
Your simple clean design would be unfinished for another 2 years with frustrated developers cursing why they had to write it in C.
It would probably also be full of security holes allowing poisoned distfiles repositories to run malicious code.
Well no, my point was that this guy was trying to plug Macintoshes without any reason for plugging them. Plugging them for being just as bad as Windows.