DVD-r is already too late. My harddrive is already 17 GB (which is actually quite modest these days), which is the maximum size definedby the DVD standard, though dvd-r is probably way below that. So I don't think the relief a dvd-r provides above normal cd-r will last long.
So I hope there will be something more advanced soon.
"I find them indispensible and ridiculously easy to use"
Sure its much better than without windowmanager. But nevertheless it's a solution to the problem that you can't keep track of 20 or so windows in one screen. Basically the solution consists of hiding the windows you don't need at the moment. I know one guy who routinely has 30 to 40 xterms spread all over his 16 or so virtual screens. Putting that in one 2d screen would be rediculous. Spreading them over 16 desktops only works if you can remember where to look for each window.
Most computer users also open and close applications. Suppose you wouldn't have to do that. A good linux pc doesn't need rebooting so the only reason to close an application is to save on memory resources. Suppose you could automate this. I.e. if memory is needed, apps that are not in use are swapped to your HD. When you need them again they are swapped in (of course this would be nonsense for commandline apps). If you take into account that one app may have several windows, the number of windows in a system increases quite a bit so you need a good way to organize them.
Of course you can argue that you don't want to see them all at the same time. But you still have the problem that from time to time you are looking for a particular window. 3d workspaces may help in finding your window faster.
I can see the point of having a 3d windowmanager. I find that 2d windowmanagers get really messy when you open more than say 4 or 5 windows. Basically you have to resort to tricks like virtual desktops or minimizing the windows since the average screen is too small to put more than a few windows next to each other.
A 3d desktop together with some other features could solve this problem. It would for instance also be nice if you would never have to start an application explicitly. Many palm top computers already have this feature and I think it is time to introduce it to the desktop also.
Of course just a enormous plane with flat windows sticking out of it is not very usefull. People are bad at keeping track of more than say 7 or 8 things at the same time. That's why menus are tree like structures (i.e. you don't put your zillion options in one big menu but you use multiple menus and submenus to organize your menuoptions). The same should apply to windowmanagers. I want to be able to organize my windows in a hierarchy. I also want to be able to have one window in multiple places in that hierarchy. A 3d structure could help to organize this.
The screenshots are really cool, though I don't see the point of working in the gimp window while looking at it at an angle of 45 degrees. It is great for finding the window, though.
A 3d windowmanager would also allow for 3d widgets, I didn't see any of those in the screenshots. Now coming up with usefull 3d widgets would really be a smart thing. Implementing them is probably not so difficult.
Now do the same with the number of people actually buying this stuff. How many licences of w2k data center do you think that MS will sell? probably a lot less than w2k workstation. Yet w2k datacenter contains a lot more functionality. Probably there's a lot of profit for MS (otherwise they wouldn't bother with the datacenter version) but still you have to consider the number of people buying the product (probably drops exponentially).
Every few weeks news like this seems to pop up: "major breaktrhrough in research". While often the research is relevant, it usually represents an incremental improvement. When I read a headline like this, I wonder: what type of cancer; what percentage of the cases of this specific type of cancer can be cured (100% is rare); has there been any case studies yet or is this another laboratory experiment.
If so, they should make a more serious effort at enforcing this rule. Lots of obvious software patent applications have been granted. These patents cause real damage in that it may cause other companies to choose other, not so effective technologies to avoid lawsuits. Also the lawsuits themselves cost time and money and as we all know the window of opportunity for succesfull deployment of software is usually not so big.
So perhaps it would work if patent holders are hold responsible for the damage. If you can prove that there is A prior art B this is well known prior art C there has been damage, then the patent holder should pay. This will cause patent applicants to be more careful since nobody likes to be sued.
"The same thing could be said of other things with immense impacts. The phone system, f'rinstance. It has had an impact on people and businesses all over the world. A great many people have phones, and use them."
I'm not denying the phone or the internet has an impact on society. That would be rediculous. I' just saying the internet is not a revolution. The telephone wasn't a revolution either, it took several decades for people to use them as they are used now. My grandmother still uses the telephone very sparingly and when she does its only for a few minutes. She'll probably never understand or use internet nor does she have to. My parents both learned how to use computers in the past ten years (internet too during the last year) but I can't say it had a major impact on their lives.
So people send an email instead of a fax, big deal. Sure it is an improvement but no revolution. I suppose in a decade or so computers and networks will be as common as the telephone is right now. But it won't be a revolution.
Interesting post. Outside the nerd community the impact of internet is fairly limited, I think. I know several people who are clueless about internet and only have the minimum skill required for reading email. But I don't think those people are less intelligent than I am (as the article suggests). They just don't have the same interest as I have. Sometimes after hours of reloading slashdot and surfing the web I wonder if I couldn't have just read my email, switched of my computer and done something useful instead.
The world is just spinning around its 24 hour spins like it has done for millions of years. I don't believe in revolutions and I refuse to see internet as one. Rather I see progressing integration of networks and computers into daily life. Nothing to worry about.
Of course you can think about the impact of internet on society, the environment, politics and such. There are people who have a very negative perspective on these matters and there are people who think internet is the final solution to all problems related to these matters. These groups of people are called pessimists and idealists and have been around for a very long time but most people are not part of either of those groups: optimism is a requirement for survival on the long term and pragmatism usually defeats idealism in the end. My believe is that human beings are particularly good at solving problems. I.e. if environment is becoming a large enough problem people will start to come up with solutions for these problems. Partly this is already happening.
The author is wondering what his friend would have done 100 years ago. Well lets think on and move back time 1000 years or even 10000 years. You'll find that each time he's doing something similar (doing what he is best at). Of course the subject of his activities will vary (computers, machines, bow and arrow, the wheel?). Of course you can also move the time forward and I don't think the pattern will change much. From my point of view a piece of software is very much like a machine, you can tweak it, play with it, improve it and some will claim it has a mind of its own. So there's plenty of room to do useful stuff with his talents.
"Your response is absurd. On one hand, you criticise a Unix user for requesting clairification on user needs while simultaneously claiming that Microsoft researches this very thing. You unjustifiably flame a Linux Advocate for the same thing you credit Microsoft with doing."
Doing research is quite different from just asking a user what he wants. It is more about anticipating what a user wants. Many unix developers think ok my user wants windows and buttons, start hacking in TCL/TK and are really surprised if the users are unhappy with the result. "What are you whining, you wanted buttons I gave you buttons". This type of developer simply doesn't understand the users real needs. I see a lot of postings like "but hey, we have wordprocessors on linux, or hey, emacs is a great editor". As long as the apps for linux remain on this level, most people will continue to use windows.
"Furthermore, your attitude about 'special purpose GUI experts' is truely the elitist sentiment here. It's also quite ironic considering how much of the early PC software base was made up by users that were also developers"
That was 15 years ago, companies developing at that time have grown up/were bought by another company/gone bankrupt. So linux is about 15 years behind in professional attitude towards software developement (and catching up real fast). 15 years ago there was no alternative, now there is.
"You have no real awareness of what your needs and wants are. You are an incompetent consumer, like some moron who always votes with the party line regardless of the circumstances."
A very cheap statement. It is in line with my earlier statement "shut up you stupid user, I know what's good for you". Quite funny, you are the living proof what I just said.
"What microsoft really does is allow other players to take the risks, create the innovations, market them and then once someone else has established that something is useful and profitable, THEN Microsoft steps in.
You are a big Microsoft proponent. We can see the blinders from here."
I'm not a big MS proponent. I'm a java programmer (SUN's java not j++) and a framemaker user. I do use some MS products and am quite happy with them. Windows 98 is my biggest annoyance right now since it is a bit too unstable, but otherwise I'm fine.
Of course I was being a little provocative (I found out that you need to that in order to get people to respond to your posts here).
Of course there are versions of linux that are very good for normal users. In all the cases where linux is succesfull as an enduser OS, you hardly notice you are running linux. Settop boxes for instance are often equiped with it.
"If it works for you, it works for you. We all have different needs. I'm not much of a gamer, and I hate the way Outlook and Word seem to crash all the time, not to mention how Word creates documents in inherently non-portable documents by default, has poorly chosen default "fuzzy-logic" settings for grammar-checking, capitalization, bullets, etc"
Word is quite stable on my PC, I can't remember having it crash. But you are right about its intrusiveness. That's the main reason I use framemaker (which has a really poor designed GUI but offers great functionality). Anyway both alternatives you mention are also available as windows versions (only they are probably more stable on windows because the windows market is larger than the linux market).
I'm not saying linux is a bad choice for an OS, I'm only saying that the features it offers are not that compelling for most users, especially the office/browser users. Having to use star office or wordperfect would actually be a downgrade for me.
"What exactly do you like better about IE / Windows than Netscape / Linux?"
Wrong question. It is not up to users to tell developers what they want. It is the developers job to figure out what the users want. This is MS in a nutshell. They do market research to figure out what people want, implement it market it and get rich. It's a simple model. They don't let some geeks drag some buttons together and call it a browser, they have researchers specialized in designing GUIs to do that sort of stuff.
This question you asked is a clear demonstration of the arrogant attitude of software developer: "shut up you stupid user, we know what's best for you". UNIX is not an end user OS. It may become an enduser OS only if developers succeed in completely hiding the kernel and config file mess from users. The original poster whas right in observing that at this point Linux is an inconsistent mess compared with the win98/ie experience.
"Also, a lot of people would point out that "the days of X Window" are still in full swing -- XFree 4.0 is coming soon!:) But there are other movements in the *nix world as well; Berlin for one."
Berlin at this point is an experiment, it is years away from becoming serious competition for windows. apple, etc. XFree 4.0 is an incremental update over XFree 3.0. Sure its much better, but good enough?
"Linux circa mid-1999 is easier to install and more easily supports both my video card (ATi Xpert@Play 98) and my modem than Windows 98 or NT did."
Good for you, but users just want to plug their computer in and use it like you do with an Apple. That is the ultimate userexperience (neither windows or linux provides it at this moment).
"I think slashdotters in general (oh what a dangerous way to start a sentence!) do think Microsoft has a "damned tight" desktop, but that's not necessarily a compliment."
I like to think of myself as somewhat more critical. I don't like MS as a company but I use their products anyway and not just because I absolutley have to. If I wanted I could install linux both at home and on my work. But I don't. Why? Windows provides all I need. It's the simple truth. From a ordinary user perspective a linux install would probably be a downgrade: flaky browser, decreased software functionality (WP for linux and star office are no alternatives for ms office for serious users), lack of games. I would have a hard time convincing non techies that linux was better for them (remember "I know what's good for you"). They would probably just shrug at the increased stability argument or better performance argument (ask a non techie to descrtibe the interior of their box and cry).
It may seem that I am a big MS proponent. I'm not, I have seriously considered using other stuff then MS stuff. I abandoned office for framemaker for instance. I'm not ready to abandon their OS though nor their browser. IE is probably the best browser for the win32 OS at this moment. Mozilla has a large coolness factor which is why I will try it when it comes but nevertheless I'm sceptical about its succes.
"Conclusion? Write in C. Or assembler, if you can. Or anything but BASIC."
Why not basic, it would suit you just fine judging from the rest of your post: ugly syntax, close to all those nice GPFs and blue screens and other interesting stuff you encounter when you descent to that level.
Assembler is nice if you are exclusively interested in performance. C becomes an option if you care about other things too but performance is still very important. Then it gets interesting because there's a whole bunch of languages each with a different goal. Perl: ugly syntax, good for implementing something fast, performance is also nice but could be better. Java: clean syntax, also good for implementing something fast, performance could be better but can be adequate in some domains given good programmer skill.
Conclusion c is for hardcore programmers who like to stay close to the hardware, perl is for people lacking programming skill who want to get the job done anyway and don't care about maintenance, Java is for people ranging from novice to hardcore programmers who like a powerfull language but also care about maintenance, scalability and platform independence.
Conclusion, you should reconsider your conclusion. I don't want to say perl is bad. I must admit I have looked at to see if I could script JavaBeans with it. In my opinion scriptlanguages can be very good for glueing together components in a system. You should check out www.scriptics.com if you are interested in this sort of stuff. One of the persons there, John Ousterhout wrote some interesting stuff about the use of TCL/TK in combination with Java.
This perl versus java thing confuses me. It seems that there are people who truly believe they can do anything with perl.
Perl is a scripting language, Java is a system programming language. Mind experiment: implement java in perl, now implement perl in java which of those two programs do you want to maintain?
No, you are right but you could use it to model a program just like you would model other datastructure. I have often wondered why we still have to store our precious source code in flat file databases (ascii files). I don't see any apparent reason except that many people like to use text editors to work on their source code. Because of this much syntactic sugar is put into the languages at the cost of structure and readability.
Treating a program as a DOM instead of a large set of ascii files scattered in multiple directories would allow for really cool tools. I'm thinking of code transformations, changing an identifier name and have the effect of the change spread through the whole program (no references to non existent stuff), no more syntax errors (the DTD prevents illegal edits), and a whole lot more.
Understandably this company wants to prevent that other people have a free ride on their years of effort to create this database.
Patents are no good for protecting the DNA database however. What they could do is patent the method used to collect the data, not the data itself.
The data collection could be protected with copyright. This would enable others to quote it (like you quote a phone book or a book of laws) but would make it illegal for somebody to just copy the entire database.
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer so I could be wrong about this, if so please point that out.
combine this with a date function and you have "where do you want to go today?":)
But seriously, the current intelli mouse driver already can make some assumptions about where you are going. I find it annoying and have it turned of most of the time but its there. It guesses to which GUI component you are moving your mouse and goes there automatically.
for instance the compaq only memory modules they used to ship with their computers. I'm not a compaq user so I haven't got a clue whether they stopped doing that. I'm sure there are more examples to be found.
More precisely, they are not going to stop having Sex. It is the consequences of having sex that are changing. In most industrialized countries having a child is a conscious choice. The number of unwanted/unplanned childs is not so high.
"People aren't going to give their money away."
In an industrialized country kids cost money. So if you are right that is a good motivation not to have kids.
"People aren't going to start being nice to each other."
That's not necessary.
"Countries aren't going to do anything as troublesome as helping to do some population control"
China does.
So, I believe that there might be some truth in these findings despite the four arguments you gave.
Can you say inbreeding? With hardly any natural enemies left, individuals who in earlier days would have died at a young age because of deseases/predators now reach an age where they can breed, thus spreading their DNA.
Weaknesses in the human DNA that usually caused an individual to die early now make it into future generations. So the examples you mention are not necessarily caused by environmental contaminants (thought this probably plays a role too) but by the fact we have little enemies that can do the darwinistic selction for us. Brain cancer can sometimes be cured, so can other deseases. People who survive such an illness can breed and spread their DNA even though it contains bad genes.
Slapping cards in a motherboard works fine for me. I don't see the advantage of Compaq reinventing everything they put in a Box. A side from the fact that you run into trouble if you try to upgrade your hardware, there is also the issue of software support. I prefer the parts in my box to be as standard as possible because it makes it much easier to fix software problems.
Dell realizes this and doesn't put exotic hardware in their boxes but instead uses standard components with a nice price/performance ratio. This is why they are growing.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually my friend is working on a sun, a pretty old one too.
DVD-r is already too late. My harddrive is already 17 GB (which is actually quite modest these days), which is the maximum size definedby the DVD standard, though dvd-r is probably way below that. So I don't think the relief a dvd-r provides above normal cd-r will last long.
So I hope there will be something more advanced soon.
"I find them indispensible and ridiculously easy to use"
Sure its much better than without windowmanager. But nevertheless it's a solution to the problem that you can't keep track of 20 or so windows in one screen. Basically the solution consists of hiding the windows you don't need at the moment. I know one guy who routinely has 30 to 40 xterms spread all over his 16 or so virtual screens. Putting that in one 2d screen would be rediculous. Spreading them over 16 desktops only works if you can remember where to look for each window.
Most computer users also open and close applications. Suppose you wouldn't have to do that. A good linux pc doesn't need rebooting so the only reason to close an application is to save on memory resources. Suppose you could automate this. I.e. if memory is needed, apps that are not in use are swapped to your HD. When you need them again they are swapped in (of course this would be nonsense for commandline apps). If you take into account that one app may have several windows, the number of windows in a system increases quite a bit so you need a good way to organize them.
Of course you can argue that you don't want to see them all at the same time. But you still have the problem that from time to time you are looking for a particular window. 3d workspaces may help in finding your window faster.
I can see the point of having a 3d windowmanager. I find that 2d windowmanagers get really messy when you open more than say 4 or 5 windows. Basically you have to resort to tricks like virtual desktops or minimizing the windows since the average screen is too small to put more than a few windows next to each other.
A 3d desktop together with some other features could solve this problem. It would for instance also be nice if you would never have to start an application explicitly. Many palm top computers already have this feature and I think it is time to introduce it to the desktop also.
Of course just a enormous plane with flat windows sticking out of it is not very usefull. People are bad at keeping track of more than say 7 or 8 things at the same time. That's why menus are tree like structures (i.e. you don't put your zillion options in one big menu but you use multiple menus and submenus to organize your menuoptions). The same should apply to windowmanagers. I want to be able to organize my windows in a hierarchy. I also want to be able to have one window in multiple places in that hierarchy. A 3d structure could help to organize this.
The screenshots are really cool, though I don't see the point of working in the gimp window while looking at it at an angle of 45 degrees. It is great for finding the window, though.
A 3d windowmanager would also allow for 3d widgets, I didn't see any of those in the screenshots. Now coming up with usefull 3d widgets would really be a smart thing. Implementing them is probably not so difficult.
Now do the same with the number of people actually buying this stuff. How many licences of w2k data center do you think that MS will sell? probably a lot less than w2k workstation. Yet w2k datacenter contains a lot more functionality. Probably there's a lot of profit for MS (otherwise they wouldn't bother with the datacenter version) but still you have to consider the number of people buying the product (probably drops exponentially).
Every few weeks news like this seems to pop up:
"major breaktrhrough in research". While often the research is relevant, it usually represents an incremental improvement. When I read a headline like this, I wonder: what type of cancer; what percentage of the cases of this specific type of cancer can be cured (100% is rare); has there been any case studies yet or is this another laboratory experiment.
To be short I'm highly sceptical.
If so, they should make a more serious effort at enforcing this rule. Lots of obvious software patent applications have been granted. These patents cause real damage in that it may cause other companies to choose other, not so effective technologies to avoid lawsuits. Also the lawsuits themselves cost time and money and as we all know the window of opportunity for succesfull deployment of software is usually not so big.
So perhaps it would work if patent holders are hold responsible for the damage. If you can prove that there is A prior art B this is well known prior art C there has been damage, then the patent holder should pay. This will cause patent applicants to be more careful since nobody likes to be sued.
"The same thing could be said of other things with immense impacts. The phone system, f'rinstance. It has had an impact on people and businesses all over the world. A great many people have phones, and use them."
I'm not denying the phone or the internet has an impact on society. That would be rediculous. I' just saying the internet is not a revolution. The telephone wasn't a revolution either, it took several decades for people to use them as they are used now. My grandmother still uses the telephone very sparingly and when she does its only for a few minutes. She'll probably never understand or use internet nor does she have to. My parents both learned how to use computers in the past ten years (internet too during the last year) but I can't say it had a major impact on their lives.
So people send an email instead of a fax, big deal. Sure it is an improvement but no revolution. I suppose in a decade or so computers and networks will be as common as the telephone is right now. But it won't be a revolution.
Interesting post. Outside the nerd community the impact of internet is fairly limited, I think. I know several people who are clueless about internet and only have the minimum skill required for reading email. But I don't think those people are less intelligent than I am (as the article suggests). They just don't have the same interest as I have. Sometimes after hours of reloading slashdot and surfing the web I wonder if I couldn't have just read my email, switched of my computer and done something useful instead.
The world is just spinning around its 24 hour spins like it has done for millions of years. I don't believe in revolutions and I refuse to see internet as one. Rather I see progressing integration of networks and computers into daily life. Nothing to worry about.
Of course you can think about the impact of internet on society, the environment, politics and such. There are people who have a very negative perspective on these matters and there are people who think internet is the final solution to all problems related to these matters. These groups of people are called pessimists and idealists and have been around for a very long time but most people are not part of either of those groups: optimism is a requirement for survival on the long term and pragmatism usually defeats idealism in the end. My believe is that human beings are particularly good at solving problems. I.e. if environment is becoming a large enough problem people will start to come up with solutions for these problems. Partly this is already happening.
The author is wondering what his friend would have done 100 years ago. Well lets think on and move back time 1000 years or even 10000 years. You'll find that each time he's doing something similar (doing what he is best at). Of course the subject of his activities will vary (computers, machines, bow and arrow, the wheel?). Of course you can also move the time forward and I don't think the pattern will change much. From my point of view a piece of software is very much like a machine, you can tweak it, play with it, improve it and some will claim it has a mind of its own. So there's plenty of room to do useful stuff with his talents.
replied to the wrong post :) one up: no 85
"Your response is absurd. On one hand, you criticise a Unix user for requesting clairification on user needs while simultaneously claiming that Microsoft researches this very thing. You unjustifiably flame a Linux Advocate for the same thing you credit Microsoft with doing."
Doing research is quite different from just asking a user what he wants. It is more about anticipating what a user wants. Many unix developers think ok my user wants windows and buttons, start hacking in TCL/TK and are really surprised if the users are unhappy with the result. "What are you whining, you wanted buttons I gave you buttons". This type of developer simply doesn't understand the users real needs. I see a lot of postings like "but hey, we have wordprocessors on linux, or hey, emacs is a great editor". As long as the apps for linux remain on this level, most people will continue to use windows.
"Furthermore, your attitude about 'special purpose GUI experts' is truely the elitist sentiment here. It's also quite ironic considering how much of the early PC software base was made up by users that were also developers"
That was 15 years ago, companies developing at that time have grown up/were bought by another company/gone bankrupt. So linux is about 15 years behind in professional attitude towards software developement (and catching up real fast). 15 years ago there was no alternative, now there is.
"You have no real awareness of what your needs and wants are. You are an incompetent consumer, like some moron who always votes with the party line regardless of the circumstances."
A very cheap statement. It is in line with my earlier statement "shut up you stupid user, I know what's good for you". Quite funny, you are the living proof what I just said.
"What microsoft really does is allow other players to take the risks, create the innovations, market them and then once someone else has established that something is useful and profitable, THEN Microsoft steps in.
You are a big Microsoft proponent. We can see the blinders from here."
I'm not a big MS proponent. I'm a java programmer (SUN's java not j++) and a framemaker user. I do use some MS products and am quite happy with them. Windows 98 is my biggest annoyance right now since it is a bit too unstable, but otherwise I'm fine.
Of course I was being a little provocative (I found out that you need to that in order to get people to respond to your posts here).
Of course there are versions of linux that are very good for normal users. In all the cases where linux is succesfull as an enduser OS, you hardly notice you are running linux. Settop boxes for instance are often equiped with it.
"If it works for you, it works for you. We all have different needs. I'm not much of a gamer, and I hate the way Outlook and Word seem to crash all the time, not to mention how Word creates documents in inherently non-portable documents by default, has poorly chosen default "fuzzy-logic" settings for grammar-checking, capitalization, bullets, etc"
Word is quite stable on my PC, I can't remember having it crash. But you are right about its intrusiveness. That's the main reason I use framemaker (which has a really poor designed GUI but offers great functionality). Anyway both alternatives you mention are also available as windows versions (only they are probably more stable on windows because the windows market is larger than the linux market).
I'm not saying linux is a bad choice for an OS, I'm only saying that the features it offers are not that compelling for most users, especially the office/browser users. Having to use star office or wordperfect would actually be a downgrade for me.
"What exactly do you like better about IE / Windows than Netscape / Linux?"
:) But there are other movements in the *nix world as well; Berlin for one."
Wrong question. It is not up to users to tell developers what they want. It is the developers job to figure out what the users want. This is MS in a nutshell. They do market research to figure out what people want, implement it market it and get rich. It's a simple model. They don't let some geeks drag some buttons together and call it a browser, they have researchers specialized in designing GUIs to do that sort of stuff.
This question you asked is a clear demonstration of the arrogant attitude of software developer: "shut up you stupid user, we know what's best for you". UNIX is not an end user OS. It may become an enduser OS only if developers succeed in completely hiding the kernel and config file mess from users. The original poster whas right in observing that at this point Linux is an inconsistent mess compared with the win98/ie experience.
"Also, a lot of people would point out that "the days of X Window" are still in full swing -- XFree 4.0 is coming soon!
Berlin at this point is an experiment, it is years away from becoming serious competition for windows. apple, etc. XFree 4.0 is an incremental update over XFree 3.0. Sure its much better, but good enough?
"Linux circa mid-1999 is easier to install and more easily supports both my video card (ATi Xpert@Play 98) and my modem than Windows 98 or NT did."
Good for you, but users just want to plug their computer in and use it like you do with an Apple. That is the ultimate userexperience (neither windows or linux provides it at this moment).
"I think slashdotters in general (oh what a dangerous way to start a sentence!) do think Microsoft has a "damned tight" desktop, but that's not necessarily a compliment."
I like to think of myself as somewhat more critical. I don't like MS as a company but I use their products anyway and not just because I absolutley have to. If I wanted I could install linux both at home and on my work. But I don't. Why? Windows provides all I need. It's the simple truth. From a ordinary user perspective a linux install would probably be a downgrade: flaky browser, decreased software functionality (WP for linux and star office are no alternatives for ms office for serious users), lack of games. I would have a hard time convincing non techies that linux was better for them (remember "I know what's good for you"). They would probably just shrug at the increased stability argument or better performance argument (ask a non techie to descrtibe the interior of their box and cry).
It may seem that I am a big MS proponent. I'm not, I have seriously considered using other stuff then MS stuff. I abandoned office for framemaker for instance. I'm not ready to abandon their OS though nor their browser. IE is probably the best browser for the win32 OS at this moment. Mozilla has a large coolness factor which is why I will try it when it comes but nevertheless I'm sceptical about its succes.
"Conclusion? Write in C. Or assembler, if you can. Or anything but BASIC."
Why not basic, it would suit you just fine judging from the rest of your post: ugly syntax, close to all those nice GPFs and blue screens and other interesting stuff you encounter when you descent to that level.
Assembler is nice if you are exclusively interested in performance. C becomes an option if you care about other things too but performance is still very important. Then it gets interesting because there's a whole bunch of languages each with a different goal. Perl: ugly syntax, good for implementing something fast, performance is also nice but could be better. Java: clean syntax, also good for implementing something fast, performance could be better but can be adequate in some domains given good programmer skill.
Conclusion c is for hardcore programmers who like to stay close to the hardware, perl is for people lacking programming skill who want to get the job done anyway and don't care about maintenance, Java is for people ranging from novice to hardcore programmers who like a powerfull language but also care about maintenance, scalability and platform independence.
Conclusion, you should reconsider your conclusion. I don't want to say perl is bad. I must admit I have looked at to see if I could script JavaBeans with it. In my opinion scriptlanguages can be very good for glueing together components in a system. You should check out www.scriptics.com if you are interested in this sort of stuff. One of the persons there, John Ousterhout wrote some interesting stuff about the use of TCL/TK in combination with Java.
This perl versus java thing confuses me. It seems that there are people who truly believe they can do anything with perl.
Perl is a scripting language, Java is a system programming language. Mind experiment: implement java in perl, now implement perl in java which of those two programs do you want to maintain?
It has hardware support for taking screenshots ...
"XML is not a programming language"
No, you are right but you could use it to model a program just like you would model other datastructure. I have often wondered why we still have to store our precious source code in flat file databases (ascii files). I don't see any apparent reason except that many people like to use text editors to work on their source code. Because of this much syntactic sugar is put into the languages at the cost of structure and readability.
Treating a program as a DOM instead of a large set of ascii files scattered in multiple directories would allow for really cool tools. I'm thinking of code transformations, changing an identifier name and have the effect of the change spread through the whole program (no references to non existent stuff), no more syntax errors (the DTD prevents illegal edits), and a whole lot more.
Is there a GNU client version of icq too?
Understandably this company wants to prevent that other people have a free ride on their years of effort to create this database.
Patents are no good for protecting the DNA database however. What they could do is patent the method used to collect the data, not the data itself.
The data collection could be protected with copyright. This would enable others to quote it (like you quote a phone book or a book of laws) but would make it illegal for somebody to just copy the entire database.
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer so I could be wrong about this, if so please point that out.
combine this with a date function and you have "where do you want to go today?" :)
But seriously, the current intelli mouse driver already can make some assumptions about where you are going. I find it annoying and have it turned of most of the time but its there. It guesses to which GUI component you are moving your mouse and goes there automatically.
for instance the compaq only memory modules they used to ship with their computers. I'm not a compaq user so I haven't got a clue whether they stopped doing that. I'm sure there are more examples to be found.
"People aren't going to stop breeding"
More precisely, they are not going to stop having Sex. It is the consequences of having sex that are changing. In most industrialized countries having a child is a conscious choice. The number of unwanted/unplanned childs is not so high.
"People aren't going to give their money away."
In an industrialized country kids cost money. So if you are right that is a good motivation not to have kids.
"People aren't going to start being nice to each other."
That's not necessary.
"Countries aren't going to do anything as troublesome as helping to do some population control"
China does.
So, I believe that there might be some truth in these findings despite the four arguments you gave.
Can you say inbreeding? With hardly any natural enemies left, individuals who in earlier days would have died at a young age because of deseases/predators now reach an age where they can breed, thus spreading their DNA.
Weaknesses in the human DNA that usually caused an individual to die early now make it into future generations. So the examples you mention are not necessarily caused by environmental contaminants (thought this probably plays a role too) but by the fact we have little enemies that can do the darwinistic selction for us. Brain cancer can sometimes be cured, so can other deseases. People who survive such an illness can breed and spread their DNA even though it contains bad genes.
Slapping cards in a motherboard works fine for me. I don't see the advantage of Compaq reinventing everything they put in a Box. A side from the fact that you run into trouble if you try to upgrade your hardware, there is also the issue of software support. I prefer the parts in my box to be as standard as possible because it makes it much easier to fix software problems.
Dell realizes this and doesn't put exotic hardware in their boxes but instead uses standard components with a nice price/performance ratio. This is why they are growing.
Here's a nice quote:
Dr. Hannibal Lecter: A census taker once tried to test me... I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.