Sending unsolicited SMSes was made illegal here in Finland around two years ago; Before that I had recieved SMS spam a few times. After that, only once. This last spam came from a foreign company which demonstrates that making SMS spam illegal doesn't completely remove the problem. What scares me is that at the moment I can't start using a spam filter as I can do with email. Worse yet, SMS spam is far more annoying than email spam since recieving a SMS always interrupts me.
Yes, Americans have bigger houses, cheaper gas, longer distance to closest neighbour and stuff, but that these things can hardly be considered as technological advances.
I completety agree with you on the better quality of life in most parts of Western Europe.
> Unfortunately the handset manufacturers do not sell to consumers, they sell to cellular telephony network operators
They do sell to consumers in countries where tying cell phone device and service together is illegal (to ensure healthy competition and consumer's freedom of choice). In the homeland of world's biggest handset manufacturer all phones are sold directly to consumers.
Perhaps the biggest problem with replacing cell phones with WLAN and VoIP is an order of magnitude difference in network coverage . I've used to complete network coverage, and I'm not going back.
A lot of new cell phones have short range radio interface, Bluetooth, as well. It uses the same spectrum as WLAN. However, due to frequenvy hopping, it should not cause too many problems...
> A lot of the students who attend IIT attend so that they can be marketable in a big business > like Microsoft.
Using and developing OSS software while studying does not make you a bit less marketable for big businesses. It is the way to go if you want to grasp the big picture, instead of just Visual Basic and.Net crap. In fact most European universities avoid Microsoft like plague. It's way easier to migrate from OSS technologies and open standards towards Microsoft platform, than the other way around.
> migrations of other German and European cities will become a lot easier and faster
Exactly. This is the beauty of OSS; if tax payers' money will be used for porting software and polishing the Linux desktop for the City of Munich, the city could as well mandate all the work to be published as open source. Once Munich has migrated, most of the other major cities in the European Union can simply reproduce their software environment.
If I were Microsoft, I'd be very scared of the likely results of Munich successfully migrating to Linux.
His point is even more valid when it comes into business users; It might be completely sufficient for the secretary to rely on KDE desktop and software bundled with it out of the box (email, browser, OpenOffice etc.). Howver, most corporate users definitely need _business_ software as well. That is, custom client-server legacy applications, Oracle databases, Quicken, Photoshop, Visio, Rational Rose, you name it. Let's look at an engineers for example: they use Autocad, Verilog, Pro Engineer, MentorGraphics. The lack of third party, _commercial_ software and sophisticated operating system infrastructure for writing custom software is what will keep Linux away from enterprise environtment.
Open source software bundled with the distributions simnply doesn't come in even close to solving all the problems. We need more support for commercial software.
> type fish:// plus the location of a machine running sshd and you can then graphically browse/copy/delete/etc files on the remote machine as if it were local.
The commercial SSH client has had exactly this funbctionality for a long time and that is probably where the KDE folks ripped the idea.
Microsoft kinda ignores SSH; You can to this stuff by opening an IPSec VPN connection to the target machine's network. Windows has had built-in support for IPSec since Windows 2000.
I admit, though, that having this SFTP functionality built-in in explorer.exe would be quite nice.
> 1) KDE does NOT require 'a little work'. It's already powerful and functionnal that way out of the box.
Right. All the Windows versions have required 'a little work' to be usable at all, Windows XP being the worst of all. The first thing I have to do is disable 'personalized menus', hiding of file extensions, all the annoying sounds when opening windows etc, themes, 'dynamic desktop'. This is like one hour of work for Windows XP. However, I kinda understand why Microsoft has by default disabled features advanced users like; regular Joe Sixpack user might actually find it easier to use with all them assistants, wizards and graphical bells and whistles. Like some other person here mentioned, a dumb Windows user's comment on Knoppix with KDE 3.1 was: 'OMG, how can you use Linux?'.
On the other hand, your comments on killing explorer.exe, busy windows etc. were completely true. Even the latest versions of Windows have quite a number of annoying glicthes. A number of times I've seriously considered downgrading from WinXP to Windows 2000 because of all the glicthes and poor performance.
> Don't know if XP has themability or to what degree
Win9x is a piece of crap and everybody knows. I haven't used it since '95. Anyways you shouldn't comment Windows desktop unless you have some experience on Windows 2000, XP or 2003. Windows XP has quite full-blown themabilyty. Some compromises were done to maintain usability of existing software. However, I like to keep it light and turn off themes in first place.
> Windows tries to list 3 full columns at once You can select whether Windows tries to show the start menu as muliple columns, one scrollable column, or less often used items hidden. I think none of these really solves the problem though...
I find the idea of multiple desktops sick and wrong, especially if you are only using one display device. However, these are matters of taste of couse.
>Gaim still isn't up to par with Trillian Gaim is Gnome software by the way, so mentioning it while hypeing KDE desktop is bit off-topic.
You had lots of good points anyways. As many here have said, I dislike KDE mostly because the awful C++ extension and overpriced QT licenses. Lately on the Linux side I've been thrilled by Gnome2.2 and the fact GTK+ seems to be maturing on the win32 platform as well. Overall, however, I don't I will switch my desktop over from Windows 2000 any time soon. Lack of applications and uniform operating system framework (clipboard, consistent UI, installer framework etc) will keep me away from it. The way to go is port all them cool open source applications first to win32 making the switch over easier for the end-users.
This isn't a flame though; I all for open source, but let's face the facts: Windows has strong position on the desktop and that will be unlikely to change any time soon. On the other hand, on the server side a bunch of other players have been around. And projects like JBoss, Apache, PostgreSQL, Samba are really making it into business environment.
Then what makes it unix-like? I think from programmmer's and end user's point of view even cygwin is quite unix-like. Sure, the kernel is quite a bit different, but all the familiar unix-like APIs and applications are there.
American dream, eh? American dream nowadays means 'I wanna get huge loads of money without doing any work'. It is true that not so many Americans have put effort on KDE programming, but I find it quite unlikely they will make money out it...
As the other two people already commented, NT (as well as MS Office) provides quite wide management API via COM components. IMHO, it is exactly the lack of this kind of operating system infrastructure that is keeping enterprise software away from Linux. Linux is a nice kernel, system call interface and a load of utilities, but is more into an operating system than just kernel and utils. Linux has some shortcomings in there. We definitely need more stuff like e.g. debconf.
It is a bad thing; switching desktop over to Linux has no incencitive if the applications you use don't run on Linux. If there is a way to make non-geek computer users to convert into Linux, it is to first make 'em use cross-platform open source applications (Gimp, OpenOffice, Eclipse to name a few such, successful apps). There should also be more commercial applications on Linux (games, Photoshop, AutoCad etc.)
I use multiple Pocket PC and Windows CE devices and have never had a crash on any of them yet.
While this is mostly true, and WinCE really is quite a different OS from full-blown NT, I've had PocketPC 3.0 crash every now and then. However, this isnt much of an annoyance, since it boots up real fast and thus far my crashes havent caused significant data losses. But having never experienced a crash -- I just find that hard to believe. Besides, all the cell phones I've owned have also crashed occasionally.
If you want convince somebody you are an exprienced programmer who knows his stuff, you can always tell about projects you've done; What was the architecture like? What was innovative in the system? What parts of it involved your design / programming? You can tell what kind of development methodologies your team applied. If you really suck, the other person will notice it along the discussion.
Also, I don't think reference to your contribution in some open source project would do any harm either. And if the other person wants to see your code, he can take a look at this open source work.
Infamous "stability" of Windows 9x is good enough reason for upgrade.
Other reason might be more advanced security features (which however - as any new, complex features - may contain lots of bugs), less work required to maintain lots of workstations, and the simple fact that latest versions of applications they are using, don't support Win95 anymore.
License for MS development does not cost you anything, and that really pisses me off with QT. You can download Plaform SDK for free from Microsoft. It contains all the libraries and header files for coding win32 applications. However, the most widely used compiler/IDE on the Windows platform, Visual Studio, is not free. That's OK since if I ever decide to go serious with commercial win32 apps, Visual Studio is just another expense...
This guy really does have a clue. What I don't get either is why CIA snipers just cant do their job. Instead US ends up spending billions on dollars on bombing entire nations back to stone age.
Microsoft doesnt manufacture hardware, but they're redefining the arhitecure of PC hardware. That is scary.
I agree with previous poster that Mini-ITX-style low-end PCs are definetely the way to go with mp3/divx etc. boxes. They cost about the same as XBox and both Linux and WindowsXP run out of the box.
I dont understand why everyone is trying to jump on the all-in-one unit bandwagon.
Because I only have two small pockets in my pants and using a purse would be just far too embarassing and inpratical. I already have my wallet, keys, PDA, cellphone and sometimes digital camera in those pockets. There simply isn't space for several gadgets there. And if I buy a mobile gaming gadget, mp3 player, FM tuner, or whatever, I wanna carry it with me always.
I think this Nokia product is awesome. If only they could make it affordable.
If I use Windows as I use Linux, it crashes, apps don't react, etc and people tell me that's "normal", even with Windows 2000, I'm supposed to be more careful and open less apps at the same time.
I''ve been in love with Debian for years as well, but this comment about Windows 2000 is simply far from truth. I use Windows 2000 as my primary desktop OS and I'm constantly running ~15 different interactive applications at the same time. The OS doesnt become less responsive or start crashing. And I'm turly a power user, easily annoyed by slow applications (i.e. most Swing applications). Windows 2000 with all latest service pack and bugfixed drivers is very stable and productive enrivonment. However, dont imagine running it on non-modern hardware (be sure to have 256, or preferably 512 megabytes of memory).
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Sending unsolicited SMSes was made illegal here in Finland around two years ago; Before that I had recieved SMS spam a few times. After that, only once. This last spam came from a foreign company which demonstrates that making SMS spam illegal doesn't completely remove the problem. What scares me is that at the moment I can't start using a spam filter as I can do with email. Worse yet, SMS spam is far more annoying than email spam since recieving a SMS always interrupts me.
You definitely should've mentioned Scandinavia being way ahead of US technologically. Those robot vacuum cleaners are available in all major stores here. Nordea used to be world's largest e-bank for several years in a row (and has been pioneering in real life Internet payment systems). I really haven't used cash money at all during the past 2 years. Cell phone network coverage is 100% here. Public transportation system just works (and applies cool technology, such as smart cards, SMS tickets, natural gas buses, automatic route planning, ultra-high speed electrical trains, freely available bikes, GSM coverage in the subway). Someone already mentioned CPUs in washing machines, but tell you what; we have CPUs even in the kitchen sink. We've had an official citizen's electronic ID (smart card, certificate) for a few years. Theres's tunnel for cross-country skiing enthusiasts.
We're planning to build more nuclear power.
Yes, Americans have bigger houses, cheaper gas, longer distance to closest neighbour and stuff, but that these things can hardly be considered as technological advances.
I completety agree with you on the better quality of life in most parts of Western Europe.
Gaim now runs also on win32 (http://gaim.sourceforge.net/win32/). It supports multiple protocols, which is nice.
> Unfortunately the handset manufacturers do not sell to consumers, they sell to cellular telephony network operators
They do sell to consumers in countries where tying cell phone device and service together is illegal (to ensure healthy competition and consumer's freedom of choice). In the homeland of world's biggest handset manufacturer all phones are sold directly to consumers.
Perhaps the biggest problem with replacing cell phones with WLAN and VoIP is an order of magnitude difference in network coverage . I've used to complete network coverage, and I'm not going back.
A lot of new cell phones have short range radio interface, Bluetooth, as well. It uses the same spectrum as WLAN. However, due to frequenvy hopping, it should not cause too many problems...
> A lot of the students who attend IIT attend so that they can be marketable in a big business
.Net crap. In fact most European universities avoid Microsoft like plague. It's way easier to migrate from OSS technologies and open standards towards Microsoft platform, than the other way around.
> like Microsoft.
Using and developing OSS software while studying does not make you a bit less marketable for big businesses. It is the way to go if you want to grasp the big picture, instead of just Visual Basic and
Some of us have had total network coverage already for years. Coverages in Europe and in USA differ by an order of magnitude...
> migrations of other German and European cities will become a lot easier and faster
Exactly. This is the beauty of OSS; if tax payers' money will be used for porting software and polishing the Linux desktop for the City of Munich, the city could as well mandate all the work to be published as open source. Once Munich has migrated, most of the other major cities in the European Union can simply reproduce their software environment.
If I were Microsoft, I'd be very scared of the likely results of Munich successfully migrating to Linux.
His point is even more valid when it comes into business users; It might be completely sufficient for the secretary to rely on KDE desktop and software bundled with it out of the box (email, browser, OpenOffice etc.). Howver, most corporate users definitely need _business_ software as well. That is, custom client-server legacy applications, Oracle databases, Quicken, Photoshop, Visio, Rational Rose, you name it. Let's look at an engineers for example: they use Autocad, Verilog, Pro Engineer, MentorGraphics. The lack of third party, _commercial_ software and sophisticated operating system infrastructure for writing custom software is what will keep Linux away from enterprise environtment.
Open source software bundled with the distributions simnply doesn't come in even close to solving all the problems. We need more support for commercial software.
> type fish:// plus the location of a machine running sshd and you can then graphically browse/copy/delete/etc files on the remote machine as if it were local.
The commercial SSH client has had exactly this funbctionality for a long time and that is probably where the KDE folks ripped the idea.
Microsoft kinda ignores SSH; You can to this stuff by opening an IPSec VPN connection to the target machine's network. Windows has had built-in support for IPSec since Windows 2000.
I admit, though, that having this SFTP functionality built-in in explorer.exe would be quite nice.
> 1) KDE does NOT require 'a little work'. It's already powerful and functionnal that way out of the box.
Right. All the Windows versions have required 'a little work' to be usable at all, Windows XP being the worst of all. The first thing I have to do is disable 'personalized menus', hiding of file extensions, all the annoying sounds when opening windows etc, themes, 'dynamic desktop'. This is like one hour of work for Windows XP. However, I kinda understand why Microsoft has by default disabled features advanced users like; regular Joe Sixpack user might actually find it easier to use with all them assistants, wizards and graphical bells and whistles. Like some other person here mentioned, a dumb Windows user's comment on Knoppix with KDE 3.1 was: 'OMG, how can you use Linux?'.
On the other hand, your comments on killing explorer.exe, busy windows etc. were completely true. Even the latest versions of Windows have quite a number of annoying glicthes. A number of times I've seriously considered downgrading from WinXP to Windows 2000 because of all the glicthes and poor performance.
> Don't know if XP has themability or to what degree
Win9x is a piece of crap and everybody knows. I haven't used it since '95. Anyways you shouldn't comment Windows desktop unless you have some experience on Windows 2000, XP or 2003. Windows XP has quite full-blown themabilyty. Some compromises were done to maintain usability of existing software. However, I like to keep it light and turn off themes in first place.
> Windows tries to list 3 full columns at once
You can select whether Windows tries to show the start menu as muliple columns, one scrollable column, or less often used items hidden. I think none of these really solves the problem though...
I find the idea of multiple desktops sick and wrong, especially if you are only using one display device. However, these are matters of taste of couse.
>Gaim still isn't up to par with Trillian
Gaim is Gnome software by the way, so mentioning it while hypeing KDE desktop is bit off-topic.
You had lots of good points anyways. As many here have said, I dislike KDE mostly because the awful C++ extension and overpriced QT licenses. Lately on the Linux side I've been thrilled by Gnome2.2 and the fact GTK+ seems to be maturing on the win32 platform as well. Overall, however, I don't I will switch my desktop over from Windows 2000 any time soon. Lack of applications and uniform operating system framework (clipboard, consistent UI, installer framework etc) will keep me away from it. The way to go is port all them cool open source applications first to win32 making the switch over easier for the end-users.
This isn't a flame though; I all for open source, but let's face the facts: Windows has strong position on the desktop and that will be unlikely to change any time soon. On the other hand, on the server side a bunch of other players have been around. And projects like JBoss, Apache, PostgreSQL, Samba are really making it into business environment.
Then what makes it unix-like? I think from programmmer's and end user's point of view even cygwin is quite unix-like. Sure, the kernel is quite a bit different, but all the familiar unix-like APIs and applications are there.
American dream, eh? American dream nowadays means 'I wanna get huge loads of money without doing any work'. It is true that not so many Americans have put effort on KDE programming, but I find it quite unlikely they will make money out it...
As the other two people already commented, NT (as well as MS Office) provides quite wide management API via COM components. IMHO, it is exactly the lack of this kind of operating system infrastructure that is keeping enterprise software away from Linux. Linux is a nice kernel, system call interface and a load of utilities, but is more into an operating system than just kernel and utils. Linux has some shortcomings in there. We definitely need more stuff like e.g. debconf.
It is a bad thing; switching desktop over to Linux has no incencitive if the applications you use don't run on Linux. If there is a way to make non-geek computer users to convert into Linux, it is to first make 'em use cross-platform open source applications (Gimp, OpenOffice, Eclipse to name a few such, successful apps). There should also be more commercial applications on Linux (games, Photoshop, AutoCad etc.)
I use multiple Pocket PC and Windows CE devices and have never had a crash on any of them yet.
While this is mostly true, and WinCE really is quite a different OS from full-blown NT, I've had PocketPC 3.0 crash every now and then. However, this isnt much of an annoyance, since it boots up real fast and thus far my crashes havent caused significant data losses. But having never experienced a crash -- I just find that hard to believe. Besides, all the cell phones I've owned have also crashed occasionally.
If you want convince somebody you are an exprienced programmer who knows his stuff, you can always tell about projects you've done; What was the architecture like? What was innovative in the system? What parts of it involved your design / programming? You can tell what kind of development methodologies your team applied. If you really suck, the other person will notice it along the discussion.
Also, I don't think reference to your contribution in some open source project would do any harm either. And if the other person wants to see your code, he can take a look at this open source work.
Infamous "stability" of Windows 9x is good enough reason for upgrade.
Other reason might be more advanced security features (which however - as any new, complex features - may contain lots of bugs), less work required to maintain lots of workstations, and the simple fact that latest versions of applications they are using, don't support Win95 anymore.
License for MS development does not cost you anything, and that really pisses me off with QT. You can download Plaform SDK for free from Microsoft. It contains all the libraries and header files for coding win32 applications. However, the most widely used compiler/IDE on the Windows platform, Visual Studio, is not free. That's OK since if I ever decide to go serious with commercial win32 apps, Visual Studio is just another expense...
This guy really does have a clue. What I don't get either is why CIA snipers just cant do their job. Instead US ends up spending billions on dollars on bombing entire nations back to stone age.
Microsoft doesnt manufacture hardware, but they're redefining the arhitecure of PC hardware. That is scary.
I agree with previous poster that Mini-ITX-style low-end PCs are definetely the way to go with mp3/divx etc. boxes. They cost about the same as XBox and both Linux and WindowsXP run out of the box.
I dont understand why everyone is trying to jump on the all-in-one unit bandwagon.
Because I only have two small pockets in my pants and using a purse would be just far too embarassing and inpratical. I already have my wallet, keys, PDA, cellphone and sometimes digital camera in those pockets. There simply isn't space for several gadgets there. And if I buy a mobile gaming gadget, mp3 player, FM tuner, or whatever, I wanna carry it with me always.
I think this Nokia product is awesome. If only they could make it affordable.
If I use Windows as I use Linux, it crashes, apps don't react, etc and people tell me that's "normal", even with Windows 2000, I'm supposed to be more careful and open less apps at the same time.
I''ve been in love with Debian for years as well, but this comment about Windows 2000 is simply far from truth. I use Windows 2000 as my primary desktop OS and I'm constantly running ~15 different interactive applications at the same time. The OS doesnt become less responsive or start crashing. And I'm turly a power user, easily annoyed by slow applications (i.e. most Swing applications). Windows 2000 with all latest service pack and bugfixed drivers is very stable and productive enrivonment. However, dont imagine running it on non-modern hardware (be sure to have 256, or preferably 512 megabytes of memory).
Ever heard of Cygwin ?