I've got a well running 94 Escort. Not 91, but I'm sure it will be going strong in three years. 112k miles on it. I bought it coming off a lease at 31k, soon afterwards drove cross-country in it, and made numerous regional trips until my wife bought a probe that was a bit better for the long trips. Later her car was totaled (while parked...), so the escort became the trip car once again. Recently, I bought an explorer for my daily commute, and now my wife uses the escort for errands around town.
While not the nicest car built, it's been extremely solid.
I've never been one for routine maintainance, such as oil changes and tune ups. The worst I've done to it is drove it to work and back for a week with no oil plug. I had the oil replaced (at least 1k past due, as always...) and noticed the next day the car was making an aweful metal noise. I didn't connect the events, however, as I blamed the brake pads that were needed 6 mos. prior, figuring the metal was poking through the lining. After a fillup, it was purring like a kitchen again...
Other than that, one set of tires (maybe 1.5, but it's somewhat fuzzy...), the timing belt that was supposed to be replaced by 80k which I learned about at 105k, and a tuneup my wife snuck in a few thousand miles back, I've not touched it...
Now, I will certainly concede that this is probably the exception, not the rule, but I cannot let a bad word be said about Ford Escorts without telling my story...
Let's see - JPEG - Joint Photographics Experts Group They have standardized it, and it's royalty free, AFAIK, but they still own it. MPEG - Moving Picture Experts Group They have standardized it, but it IS NOT royalty free, including... MP3 - Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG-1 Layer 3, to be exact.) While involved with MPEG, Fraunhofer IIS-A and Thomson worked on and patented crucial parts of the MP3 format, AND THEY DO LICENCE IT.
REDHAT CANNOT LET YOU DOWNLOAD IT WITHOUT BREAKING THE LAW! What about this can't you idiots understand???
1. Metacity was started as a personal project. HP was scratching his own itch, not trying to write THE gnome wm. Other's loved it and adopted it.
2. Sawfish uses lisp/scheme/guile/whatever, which HP was not interested in screwing with.
3. Metacity was written to be lean and mean, not kitchen sink. This kept bugs to a minimum, throughout the development of it. Even early versions "just worked". Sawfish, on the other hand, was a mess.
Might want to check some of those with the right DTD. I didn't check many, but the w3 in particular uses XHTML, which validates correctly against the XHTML DTD...
As I've read some of the mailing lists every day for the past few weeks, there seems to be MAJOR activity by SUN on GNOME. Sander, Billh, Calum, and Stephen (sorry if I missed people!) are very active on the mailing lists. The Accessability Toolkit has been part of their work, but also in drafting some rather encouraging style guides and documentation, along with general hacking on various libraries and applications (including Nautilus, which was pronounced dead after Eazel went boom...). I seriously doubt they plan to drop GNOME, as I seriously doubt Solaris 9 will ship without it, considering the work they are putting into it. The DEVELOPMENT platform should be out by Christmas, with other applications ported soon afterwards.
And, for a better question, why would Sun want to pay TT for a licence for QT? Redhat? Why would any company want to pay for a widget set to develop (closed-source, mind you) for Linux? If a Symantec, IBM, Intuit, or, GASP, even M$ wanted to write Linux software, my guess is they would use an LGPL library (Gnome) over paying for QT licences. (I could be wrong, as I don't pay much attention to KDE, but their FAQ seem to say I'm not...)
Which brings me to the main point I'd like to make, IT'S BEEN ALL ABOUT THE INFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE PAST YEAR!!! It takes a lot of behind the scenes work for a program such as Evolution to work, so that's what the Gnomers have been hacking on. The problem is, YOU (the user) won't see it right away!
The technologies these guys have been busting their arses on will make the applications (like Evolution already proves) kick butt.
GConf - Consolidated configuration system with multiple backends. XML or BerkleyDB for user now, hopefully ACAP or LDAP for network users soon. Who know's what's next!
ATK - Accessability Toolkit for screenreaders and such, built-in to the platform. This is important for corporate use with the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) in US, and I'm sure others outside the US.
Bonobo - Corba based REAL components, not just OLE. Look at the power in Evolution. (I'm a big fan, as if you couldn't tell, but not just for myself, but for my wife and grandmother as well. I don't think mutt would cut it for them...:>)
Pango - i18n and l10n, Right-to-Left, and such... Don't know much about this being an en-us, but I'm sure it's important!
Glib/Gtk+ - Very nice improvements, Anti-Aliased text, and so forth.
Nautilus - Darin and others have been optimizing and working out the bugs in this for a while. It has it's problems on the bleeding edge, but it's comming along! I'm not sure about the extent of his involvment, but tigert has been showing up on the list. If he is working on it, we can expect quite a bit in the way of jaw-dropping eye-candy...
Glade/libglade/bonoboui(?) - XML UI descriptions at runtime. RAD UI development at it's best... This is very important.
GStreamer - While not Gnome platform, per se, it has ALOT of infrastructure in place in the A/V dept, and once ported to 2.0, will make for a nice multimedia API/Application Toolkit. (If memory serves correctly, it's been a while since I checked up on this one...)
And a plethora of other platform tidbits. Sure, YOU (user) won't see any radical differences between 1.4 and 2.0, other than AA text and such, but just wait until 2.0.1, 2.2, or 3.0, and so on. It took YEARS for the infrastrucure of Linux to become what it is. Now, it is proven solid. The infrastructure of Gnome is REALLY fleshing out. And need I remind you of the 1.0 - 1.2 hurdle... I imagine 2.0 will come out with eveyone trashing it, much like 1.0, then 2.2 come along with much the same reception 1.2 had... Sure, not good for PR, but...:>
NOT that this takes anything away from KDE. Infact, it's what I recommend to my non-developer friends. To my developer and/or sysadmin friends, I show the horsepower under Gnome's hood. So far I've had nothing but ooos and ahhhs from both camps. Later, I'm sure I'll be showing Gnome all-around.
And finally, CUT THAT "GNOME'S DYING" CRAP OUT! Not only does two projects not hurt, it HELPS! We need all the competition we can get, because that's what causes innovation! We've all seen M$ resting on their laurels, because they've had no competition! WE DON'T WANT THAT! And aside from some notable exceptions, the DEVELOPERS OF BOTH PROJECTS SEEM TO UNDERSTAND THIS!!! Take a look at this happy bday congratz to KDE on Gnome News and PLEASE, BE THANKFUL TO EVERYONE.
For my part, thanks Havoc, Owen, Michael, Seth, Darin, Sather, Ian, Jacob, Alex, Maciej, Calum, Bill, George, Chema, and all I've left out for your hard work. Don't let the ignorance of a few make you at all hesitant in your work. It is greatly appreciated!
Slashdot Mirror
I read the comments to this article just to get a joke along the lines of:
Oh the irony! A tax on those who are bad at math funding the history of the greatest mathematicians of WWII.
I am sorely disappointed, slashdotters. Was it too easy? Surely I'm not the only one that laughed at the though?
Okay, I have to bite...
I've got a well running 94 Escort. Not 91, but I'm sure it will be going strong in three years. 112k miles on it. I bought it coming off a lease at 31k, soon afterwards drove cross-country in it, and made numerous regional trips until my wife bought a probe that was a bit better for the long trips. Later her car was totaled (while parked...), so the escort became the trip car once again. Recently, I bought an explorer for my daily commute, and now my wife uses the escort for errands around town.
While not the nicest car built, it's been extremely solid.
I've never been one for routine maintainance, such as oil changes and tune ups. The worst I've done to it is drove it to work and back for a week with no oil plug. I had the oil replaced (at least 1k past due, as always...) and noticed the next day the car was making an aweful metal noise. I didn't connect the events, however, as I blamed the brake pads that were needed 6 mos. prior, figuring the metal was poking through the lining. After a fillup, it was purring like a kitchen again...
Other than that, one set of tires (maybe 1.5, but it's somewhat fuzzy...), the timing belt that was supposed to be replaced by 80k which I learned about at 105k, and a tuneup my wife snuck in a few thousand miles back, I've not touched it...
Now, I will certainly concede that this is probably the exception, not the rule, but I cannot let a bad word be said about Ford Escorts without telling my story...
Grr... Don't feed the trolls...
...
Let's see -
JPEG - Joint Photographics Experts Group
They have standardized it, and it's royalty free, AFAIK, but they still own it.
MPEG - Moving Picture Experts Group
They have standardized it, but it IS NOT royalty free, including
MP3 - Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG-1 Layer 3, to be exact.)
While involved with MPEG, Fraunhofer IIS-A and Thomson worked on and patented crucial parts of the MP3 format, AND THEY DO LICENCE IT.
REDHAT CANNOT LET YOU DOWNLOAD IT WITHOUT BREAKING THE LAW! What about this can't you idiots understand???
Read this...
http://www.mp3licensing.com/index.html
Grr... I won't feed the trolls, I won't feed the trolls... next time...
I've been evaluating Sophos due to the Perl-SAVI module and it's integration with MailScanner. Looks good, so far...
Expensive, though! *Gulp*
Hmm... Where to start...
1. Metacity was started as a personal project. HP was scratching his own itch, not trying to write THE gnome wm. Other's loved it and adopted it.
2. Sawfish uses lisp/scheme/guile/whatever, which HP was not interested in screwing with.
3. Metacity was written to be lean and mean, not kitchen sink. This kept bugs to a minimum, throughout the development of it. Even early versions "just worked". Sawfish, on the other hand, was a mess.
4. He who writes the code, makes the rules...
Ishi
Might want to check some of those with the right DTD. I didn't check many, but the w3 in particular uses XHTML, which validates correctly against the XHTML DTD...
As I've read some of the mailing lists every day for the past few weeks, there seems to be MAJOR activity by SUN on GNOME. Sander, Billh, Calum, and Stephen (sorry if I missed people!) are very active on the mailing lists. The Accessability Toolkit has been part of their work, but also in drafting some rather encouraging style guides and documentation, along with general hacking on various libraries and applications (including Nautilus, which was pronounced dead after Eazel went boom...). I seriously doubt they plan to drop GNOME, as I seriously doubt Solaris 9 will ship without it, considering the work they are putting into it. The DEVELOPMENT platform should be out by Christmas, with other applications ported soon afterwards.
And, for a better question, why would Sun want to pay TT for a licence for QT? Redhat? Why would any company want to pay for a widget set to develop (closed-source, mind you) for Linux? If a Symantec, IBM, Intuit, or, GASP, even M$ wanted to write Linux software, my guess is they would use an LGPL library (Gnome) over paying for QT licences. (I could be wrong, as I don't pay much attention to KDE, but their FAQ seem to say I'm not...)
Which brings me to the main point I'd like to make, IT'S BEEN ALL ABOUT THE INFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE PAST YEAR!!! It takes a lot of behind the scenes work for a program such as Evolution to work, so that's what the Gnomers have been hacking on. The problem is, YOU (the user) won't see it right away!
The technologies these guys have been busting their arses on will make the applications (like Evolution already proves) kick butt.
GConf - Consolidated configuration system with multiple backends. XML or BerkleyDB for user now, hopefully ACAP or LDAP for network users soon. Who know's what's next!
ATK - Accessability Toolkit for screenreaders and such, built-in to the platform. This is important for corporate use with the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) in US, and I'm sure others outside the US.
Bonobo - Corba based REAL components, not just OLE. Look at the power in Evolution. (I'm a big fan, as if you couldn't tell, but not just for myself, but for my wife and grandmother as well. I don't think mutt would cut it for them... :>)
Pango - i18n and l10n, Right-to-Left, and such... Don't know much about this being an en-us, but I'm sure it's important!
Glib/Gtk+ - Very nice improvements, Anti-Aliased text, and so forth.
Nautilus - Darin and others have been optimizing and working out the bugs in this for a while. It has it's problems on the bleeding edge, but it's comming along! I'm not sure about the extent of his involvment, but tigert has been showing up on the list. If he is working on it, we can expect quite a bit in the way of jaw-dropping eye-candy...
Glade/libglade/bonoboui(?) - XML UI descriptions at runtime. RAD UI development at it's best... This is very important.
GStreamer - While not Gnome platform, per se, it has ALOT of infrastructure in place in the A/V dept, and once ported to 2.0, will make for a nice multimedia API/Application Toolkit. (If memory serves correctly, it's been a while since I checked up on this one...)
And a plethora of other platform tidbits. Sure, YOU (user) won't see any radical differences between 1.4 and 2.0, other than AA text and such, but just wait until 2.0.1, 2.2, or 3.0, and so on. It took YEARS for the infrastrucure of Linux to become what it is. Now, it is proven solid. The infrastructure of Gnome is REALLY fleshing out. And need I remind you of the 1.0 - 1.2 hurdle... I imagine 2.0 will come out with eveyone trashing it, much like 1.0, then 2.2 come along with much the same reception 1.2 had... Sure, not good for PR, but... :>
NOT that this takes anything away from KDE. Infact, it's what I recommend to my non-developer friends. To my developer and/or sysadmin friends, I show the horsepower under Gnome's hood. So far I've had nothing but ooos and ahhhs from both camps. Later, I'm sure I'll be showing Gnome all-around.
And finally, CUT THAT "GNOME'S DYING" CRAP OUT! Not only does two projects not hurt, it HELPS! We need all the competition we can get, because that's what causes innovation! We've all seen M$ resting on their laurels, because they've had no competition! WE DON'T WANT THAT! And aside from some notable exceptions, the DEVELOPERS OF BOTH PROJECTS SEEM TO UNDERSTAND THIS!!! Take a look at this happy bday congratz to KDE on Gnome News and PLEASE, BE THANKFUL TO EVERYONE.
For my part, thanks Havoc, Owen, Michael, Seth, Darin, Sather, Ian, Jacob, Alex, Maciej, Calum, Bill, George, Chema, and all I've left out for your hard work. Don't let the ignorance of a few make you at all hesitant in your work. It is greatly appreciated!
Chris