In a world where certain hardware developers are wont to open their specs, this is not surprising. When we talk about "Linux" proper, that's the kernel. It's much easier for employees of HW companies to contribute(with or without official support) there. I would likewise expect the remaining 25% to be made up of hard-core computer scientists and/or mathematicians.
P.S. Dear GNOME Hackers, in case you are getting nervous now... consider this: if Bowie said "don't jump off the cliff" would you jump just because he told you not to?;-)
You know, we all laughed at the guy, but he was right all along about the rewindable desktop! Viva la Propaganda!
I'll grant you that they should have to follow the same regs as a CLEC if you'll grant me that we need to keep a keen eye on the application of the "universal service fees."
Unfortunately, that's not really possible at X or the windowmanager. X really just handles putting pixels up on the screen, sometimes over a network. Unless you include something like Xaw that few use, there isn't really too much of a concept of "button" or "text area" or anything there. This is what we have GTK and Qt for, so a standard theme would have to encompass both to achieve unity. I'd like to see some sort of widget theme standard come out of freedesktop, though. As for the windowmanager, that's just the border around your windows like the name implies. Too many of us like to be able to change that for a windowmanager that has one theme to evolve.
A standard like you're talking about doesn't need to be done at the distro level, any good artist(which I am not) could create one for everybody.. It would just need to encompass a Qt, GTK, Icon, and Windowmanager theme.
Personally, I don't think they have a leg to stand on and that they're going to try to claim ownership of Unix at large a la AT&T.
If this is what they try, they will fail.
If, OTOH, they have an actual claim, then we will find out in court. Then we will remove anything that they have a valid claim to.
Like you said, we won't know until it gets to court. Judging by some of the slides I saw of their examples though, I think we'll see that they're a paper tiger.
No, you're not offering a solution. You're telling people what you think they should do. If you were offering a solution, you would be submitting patches to the KDE and GNOME mailing lists offering them better freedesktop integration, or perhaps working on freedesktop specs yourself. If you've done any of these things, please share and I will be quiet. I sit back and accept things the way they are because the only contributions I can really claim are the occasional bug report or helping someone out on a list. Open source developers give to us out of the kindness of their hearts, and it is foolish for us to believe that we should be able to give them unfunded mandates.
So, your complaint is that Linux doesn't work well with Microsoft products? Could you do us a favor? Instead of complaining about this to us, could you please go join some Microsoft newsgroups and tell them about it? I think we've done more than our share to play nice with them and the amount they've done to play nice with us is right up around "undefined value." Jeez, of course an openoffice install isn't going to work perfectly with office; I think that if you converted everyone to openoffice that those installs would work with each other really well, though.
Sure, and while we're at it, maybe all the countries of the world could kinda get together and agree to stop having wars. Let's wake up and smell the coffee: the "Linux community" you speak of can just barely hold itself together, let alone attempt some sort of grand unity. Sure, it's always better when things interoperate in a standard way, but when people don't agree with one another they simply agree to disagree and go on about their work.
Reading through some of these comments, I can't agree with you more. Sure, there's a place for linux in our enterprises.. Places like call centers or server racks. But this goal of having Dells or whatever come preinstalled with linux? Why the hell should we want that?
Then the onus is on the company doing the embracing to set the standards. This is no different than in a Windows environment, where an organization must choose its applications. Though many businesses are content to standardize on Microsoft entirely, there are many that pick and choose to create a standard work environment.
There's nothing wrong with a company deciding that all Linux desktops will be Red Hat running KDE, but if I go home and install Gentoo with GNOME they can't even try to tell me I can't do that.
so, uh, what's your plan? to choose one standard and assassinate the developers of the others? It's not like there's one set of developers in linux that are churning out multiple products, there's multiple groups of people, and they each do their own thing. if you think all of them are going to stop doing their own thing so that they can work on the other guy's thing, well.. I can't help you.
nobody decided that there needed to be more than one desktop solution, it just evolved that way since different developers have different goals. trying to unite them would be like saying, "two oceans are too much. we need to figure out how to merge the atlantic and pacific oceans in to one super-ocean." that's just silly.
that said, the more we can get the different desktops to interoperate via projects like freedesktop, the better off we'll all be.
blahblahblah.. everyone knows that dumping tons of carbon nanoparticles into the air is perfectly harmless. it's not like they're building these facilities RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF RESIDENTIAL AREAS..
You're smoking crack. While I agree that hydrocarbon separation is a poor long term excuse, your denial of increased efficiency is laughable. Furthermore, biomass(while not "clean") would keep us from suckling the black teat of the middle east. Furthermore, there do exist and will exist truly clean ways of producing hydrogen. While inefficient, current methods of electrolysis could be coupled with a clean energy source such as wind or hydro power. In the future, we'll have photoelectrochemical electrolysis. Even plain old electrolysis coupled with nuclear power would be OK in my eyes, for the simple reason that we'd be stopping the carbon emissions and disconnecting from the easterners.
If you look up photoelectrochemical electrolysis, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. In the mean time, if you want a clean, inefficient way, try plain old electrolysis and some wind turbines.
Of course, if you'd rather we stay involved in mideast politics so we can keep sucking their crude, be my guest. I'm sure our "defense" stocks could use it.
The answer you are looking for lies in photoelectrochemical electrolysis. This will use the sun's energy and some electricity to split water. It's still a little ways off from working well, but since it's based on semiconductor materials, I've no doubt that it will progress rapidly. The point is that we need to start working on converting our huge infrastructure NOW so that when these developments are ready, they can be implemented quickly. Using natural gas, biomass, or plain old electrolysis are decent temporary measures; they will be replaced, though.
There are two components of regulation of which I am currently aware. One I belive should apply to Vonage, the other should not. The first is 911 service. Since vonage is portable(you can unplug your hardware and take it elsewhere) there definately needs to be a way for the customer that uses 911 service to pick up the tab. The second are the universal service obligations. These allegedly exist to further the buildout of the nation's phone lines. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Vonage doesn't seem to be in the business of actually building phone lines, so I fail to see how they should be obligated to pay this and pass that cost on to their subscribers. I'm not sure what type of arrangement they have with the phone companies to get onto their networks, but I'm sure it involves them paying money. If this money isn't being used to improve the telcos they're getting services from that's not really Vonage's fault.
They're not a phone company because THEY DO NOT RUN PHONE LINES TO YOUR HOUSE. Sure, they might have cage space in a whole bunch of COs, but they don't hang big metal wires on tall wooden poles. The fact that phone companies do do this is what requires them to be regulated; these lines need to be run everywhere.. Vonage is a customer of the telcos(or possibly a CLEC or something, I'm not sure) and frankly anyone accessing Vonage by DSL is a customer as well. Whatever regulation need be in place is already in place. Again.. No physical line to the location and they're not a phone company.
In a world where certain hardware developers are wont to open their specs, this is not surprising. When we talk about "Linux" proper, that's the kernel. It's much easier for employees of HW companies to contribute(with or without official support) there. I would likewise expect the remaining 25% to be made up of hard-core computer scientists and/or mathematicians.
Given to you by parents or friends? You do know that license is non-transferrable, right?
Also, I bought my copies of DOS 3.3 and Windows 95. I feel that I am entitled to patches like Windows 2000 and XP. If you disagree, you can Suck It.
You know, we all laughed at the guy, but he was right all along about the rewindable desktop! Viva la Propaganda!
I'll grant you that they should have to follow the same regs as a CLEC if you'll grant me that we need to keep a keen eye on the application of the "universal service fees."
Unfortunately, that's not really possible at X or the windowmanager. X really just handles putting pixels up on the screen, sometimes over a network. Unless you include something like Xaw that few use, there isn't really too much of a concept of "button" or "text area" or anything there. This is what we have GTK and Qt for, so a standard theme would have to encompass both to achieve unity. I'd like to see some sort of widget theme standard come out of freedesktop, though. As for the windowmanager, that's just the border around your windows like the name implies. Too many of us like to be able to change that for a windowmanager that has one theme to evolve.
A standard like you're talking about doesn't need to be done at the distro level, any good artist(which I am not) could create one for everybody.. It would just need to encompass a Qt, GTK, Icon, and Windowmanager theme.
Well, that's fair.
Personally, I don't think they have a leg to stand on and that they're going to try to claim ownership of Unix at large a la AT&T.
If this is what they try, they will fail.
If, OTOH, they have an actual claim, then we will find out in court. Then we will remove anything that they have a valid claim to.
Like you said, we won't know until it gets to court. Judging by some of the slides I saw of their examples though, I think we'll see that they're a paper tiger.
No, you're not offering a solution. You're telling people what you think they should do. If you were offering a solution, you would be submitting patches to the KDE and GNOME mailing lists offering them better freedesktop integration, or perhaps working on freedesktop specs yourself. If you've done any of these things, please share and I will be quiet. I sit back and accept things the way they are because the only contributions I can really claim are the occasional bug report or helping someone out on a list. Open source developers give to us out of the kindness of their hearts, and it is foolish for us to believe that we should be able to give them unfunded mandates.
Can we get rid of Katz and replace him with this guy? Please?
So, your complaint is that Linux doesn't work well with Microsoft products? Could you do us a favor? Instead of complaining about this to us, could you please go join some Microsoft newsgroups and tell them about it? I think we've done more than our share to play nice with them and the amount they've done to play nice with us is right up around "undefined value." Jeez, of course an openoffice install isn't going to work perfectly with office; I think that if you converted everyone to openoffice that those installs would work with each other really well, though.
like bluecurve?
I don't really like they way it looks, but if that's what you're into..
Sure, and while we're at it, maybe all the countries of the world could kinda get together and agree to stop having wars. Let's wake up and smell the coffee: the "Linux community" you speak of can just barely hold itself together, let alone attempt some sort of grand unity. Sure, it's always better when things interoperate in a standard way, but when people don't agree with one another they simply agree to disagree and go on about their work.
Reading through some of these comments, I can't agree with you more. Sure, there's a place for linux in our enterprises.. Places like call centers or server racks. But this goal of having Dells or whatever come preinstalled with linux? Why the hell should we want that?
Then the onus is on the company doing the embracing to set the standards. This is no different than in a Windows environment, where an organization must choose its applications. Though many businesses are content to standardize on Microsoft entirely, there are many that pick and choose to create a standard work environment.
There's nothing wrong with a company deciding that all Linux desktops will be Red Hat running KDE, but if I go home and install Gentoo with GNOME they can't even try to tell me I can't do that.
so, uh, what's your plan? to choose one standard and assassinate the developers of the others? It's not like there's one set of developers in linux that are churning out multiple products, there's multiple groups of people, and they each do their own thing. if you think all of them are going to stop doing their own thing so that they can work on the other guy's thing, well.. I can't help you.
nobody decided that there needed to be more than one desktop solution, it just evolved that way since different developers have different goals. trying to unite them would be like saying, "two oceans are too much. we need to figure out how to merge the atlantic and pacific oceans in to one super-ocean." that's just silly.
that said, the more we can get the different desktops to interoperate via projects like freedesktop, the better off we'll all be.
What, you don't actually believe we give a crap about SCO, do you? They're just here for our entertainment.
blahblahblah.. everyone knows that dumping tons of carbon nanoparticles into the air is perfectly harmless. it's not like they're building these facilities RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF RESIDENTIAL AREAS..
oh, wait...
You're smoking crack. While I agree that hydrocarbon separation is a poor long term excuse, your denial of increased efficiency is laughable. Furthermore, biomass(while not "clean") would keep us from suckling the black teat of the middle east. Furthermore, there do exist and will exist truly clean ways of producing hydrogen. While inefficient, current methods of electrolysis could be coupled with a clean energy source such as wind or hydro power. In the future, we'll have photoelectrochemical electrolysis. Even plain old electrolysis coupled with nuclear power would be OK in my eyes, for the simple reason that we'd be stopping the carbon emissions and disconnecting from the easterners.
If you look up photoelectrochemical electrolysis, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised. In the mean time, if you want a clean, inefficient way, try plain old electrolysis and some wind turbines.
Of course, if you'd rather we stay involved in mideast politics so we can keep sucking their crude, be my guest. I'm sure our "defense" stocks could use it.
The answer you are looking for lies in photoelectrochemical electrolysis. This will use the sun's energy and some electricity to split water. It's still a little ways off from working well, but since it's based on semiconductor materials, I've no doubt that it will progress rapidly. The point is that we need to start working on converting our huge infrastructure NOW so that when these developments are ready, they can be implemented quickly. Using natural gas, biomass, or plain old electrolysis are decent temporary measures; they will be replaced, though.
There are two components of regulation of which I am currently aware. One I belive should apply to Vonage, the other should not. The first is 911 service. Since vonage is portable(you can unplug your hardware and take it elsewhere) there definately needs to be a way for the customer that uses 911 service to pick up the tab. The second are the universal service obligations. These allegedly exist to further the buildout of the nation's phone lines. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Vonage doesn't seem to be in the business of actually building phone lines, so I fail to see how they should be obligated to pay this and pass that cost on to their subscribers. I'm not sure what type of arrangement they have with the phone companies to get onto their networks, but I'm sure it involves them paying money. If this money isn't being used to improve the telcos they're getting services from that's not really Vonage's fault.
They're not a phone company because THEY DO NOT RUN PHONE LINES TO YOUR HOUSE. Sure, they might have cage space in a whole bunch of COs, but they don't hang big metal wires on tall wooden poles. The fact that phone companies do do this is what requires them to be regulated; these lines need to be run everywhere.. Vonage is a customer of the telcos(or possibly a CLEC or something, I'm not sure) and frankly anyone accessing Vonage by DSL is a customer as well. Whatever regulation need be in place is already in place. Again.. No physical line to the location and they're not a phone company.
Who do you think posted all of those?
'nuff said
I think it's funny that your nick means "a state of general or local insensibility."