To those who pooh-pooh the price, I ask to you show me a comparable machine by any competitor that fulfills the same criteria:
Well, you're listing off the wrong criteria, and you even know what the real criteria is, since you mention it later in your post: price. Sure, Apple's new iMac is not only fairly priced for what it does, it's a good deal (in my opinion). But that's not what the critics are criticising. They're talking about the low-end offering, which is typically the eMachines/BYO/$400-Compuserve-subsidy computer. The iMac has traditionally been Apple's competitive offering in that area, with a $799 price point. Yes, to these people it is all about price and not features. If Apple releases an iMac with a 12" display, 10 GB drive, 8 MB graphics card, CD player (no R, no RW, no DVD), and keeps the G3, that would be fine if they hit a price of $699 or $799 or even $899. But they don't.
I think what Apple, and even my friends on/. haven't put their fingers on yet is why and who goes for the cheapie boxes. It may be some cheapskates, and some college kids, but a lot of low-end sales are by people who already have a "main" computer or two, and now they're fleshing out the satellites, if you know what I mean. They're building up the peripheral boxes to round out the home. I'm probably an extreme of that, I have 7 computers (including this Samsung NoteMaster 486 laptop, 20 megs of RAM, 75 mhz, which I just got Red Hat onto, cool!). But most families I know nowadays have 2 or 3 computers, and only 1 is good. The others are basically Web/email/solitaire terminals scattered around the house. That's the low-end market, and Apple has just moved out of that market. It may be that the $799 price point just wasn't profitable at all for Apple. But I suspect that it's something else: Steve simply refuses to rip out features to hit the price the critics want. He just won't offer something low-end. It's not Apple's style. I think that's unfortunate, because what I'd really like to do is get an Airport hub, buy one obscenely fast and tricked out Macintosh, and then populate the house with 2 or 3 other el-cheapo Macs. That can't be done with the new line of Apple products.
I would like to know why Peter Jackson didn't include a wet t-shirt scene when she was escaping the ring wraiths in the river. Think DVD pause and Zoom.
Well. I thought the film couldn't have been improved. Apparently, I was wrong.
And that's the first bug with this system, I think. People will be able to make links to Slashdot that appear visually to be links to other stories or something innocent, but instead these links might actually mass-blacklist a victim if a lot of Slashdotters are fooled into clicking the links. I think these links should be flagged or not allowed in the body of messages.
You know, I never read the article that is cited here. I did some research on my own about 2 months ago, when I was looking for a video player for my new Linux boxes. And I came to a conclusion that appears to be roughly similar to what people are saying about this article: in short, the MPlayer developers are rude, condescending, and foul-mouthed. I think that is their right. They made it, they can do/say whatever they want about it. But I also think it is legitimate for people to then say "I don't want to associate with these people." And why should you have to, when there is an excellent alternative that also plays Quicktime video (sans Sorenson), and comes in RPM format for SuSE, Red Hat, and Mandrake. So you can get an equally-good player, with more courteous developers to back it up, and with no need to compile unless you enjoy that sort of thing. This is market competition at work, and it appears to me that Xine may be a winning alternative.
There were a lot of threads about this back when slashdot was covering the changeover. But anyway, yes, the 1.5 mbit limit is across the board for AT&T customers, AFAIK. I am limited here in Sunnyvale, California. But while the limitation is noticable (no more insanely fast KaZaA downloads), the switch to AT&T's backbone was so fast (about 3 days, I think) that I really can't complain. Their service has been good. So I'm fairly happy with AT&T, although I would look at better deals.
After that there doesn't appear to be too much on the horizon, anyone know of any good games coming out for Linux?
The one I'm looking forward to is Neverwinter Nights. It's beautiful, and will be released for Linux simultaneously with Windows. It should appeal to both to RPG fans and a little bit to FPS fans -- maybe the Heretic fans. It's due out in March 2002.
It appears to actually be fixes
on
Kernel 2.4.17 Out
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· Score: 5, Interesting
It looks like we're actually seeing 99% bug fixes this time around, rather than new features being added. Yay for having a 2.5 branch, it seems to be getting the experimental code now. This may be the first 2.4 kernel I compile for my system (I'm not saying I'm still stuck in 2.2, just that I've kept the default 2.4 kernels from my Mandrake and SuSE installs). I also see a couple ext3 fixes, which means I'm pretty comfortable having this replace the patched-to-use-ext3 2.4.10 kernel in my SuSE 7.3 box.
The 'home' icon with the two people is stolen from XP; the trash icon from 9x.
Not according to the auhor, although he could certainly be lying. At this page (about 5 screens down) he writes:
Some of my hardware icons are based on the Windows XP ones (read: I got my inspiration with Windows XP, but I did not rip any icons). I've made all the icons myself
If true, then I have no problem with this. Blatant copying is not legal, but "clean room" reimplementations have been upheld in court -- this is what Apple did to Xerox, and what Windows did to Apple.
You don't think pirating is stealing, so it's not? First off, it's not a victimless crime. You are stealing revenue from whoever owns the rights to that software. You are taking something that belongs to someone else. It doesn't matter that the original is not destroyed, you're still depriving someone of the revenue that they worked to earn.
So that's how you make this argument. I have been trying unsuccessfully for quite some time to simplify my thoughts on copyright infringement. Your comment that this is theft of a revenue stream, even if it is an "artifical" one created by laws, sums up exactly what I was trying so miserably to say in a few previous/. posts. I'm disappointed to see that your post is only moderated to a +2. Even if the moderators disagree with your points, they ought to give you credit for being more well-spoken than the rest of us.
Umm. Okay. Well, since you posted as an anonymous coward, I have no idea if you're a KDE developer or just some nerd like me who has an opinion. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that regardless of who you might be, if you really think the best solution is to let Gnome be the superior tool here, well okay. I disagree with you, but you're free to have an opinion.
Good icon design means keeping icons clean, simple, and easy to use.
I don't see any conceivable way you could say that Gnome's icon of a folder is less usable simply because it looks better. That's absurd.
You will also notice a poll on the comments page, the author asked if iKons should be the default icon set for KDE3...
...And my vote, not having seen all the other themes, would be that yes, this should be the default icon set. It's far stronger than the existing one, but it isn't flashy or obnoxiously kewl. It's just great. The real experts (I'm just a guy who cares enough to make a post or two, not an expert on the system) should decide if iKons falls apart as you drill down into obscure areas (are there icons for everything? or just enough to make the desktop look good?). Or, if it really shines all the way through. If so, I'd be seriously considering this "pre-built" solution.
GNOME2 appears to go the same route, and it is looking pretty similiar to KDE2's icons. Compare these two screenshots:
I concede that the browser icons in the Gnome screenshot look as sucky as KDE's icons. But look at Gnome's folder icon. Look at Gnome's icons in the task bar (the larger icons, probably 48x48 pixels). They're beautiful. The shading behind the folders, the gradient on the folder itself, these are gorgeous icons. In the words of Steve Jobs, these are "lickable" icons. Don't underestimate the power that beauty has to make a work environment more livable and comfortable. KDE needs this.
Re:Had a look at the screenshots..
on
KDE 3.0 beta 1 is out
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
What did you expect? Animated icons? fancy colors? A new task bar?
There is this old saying....If it aint broke, dont fix it!
Hmmm. Well, releasing screenshots certainly invites the user to view the 3.0 release as primarily visual. You can hardly fault the original post for that. But I would make two other points. First: yes, the GUI is lacking in some areas, and could stand some fixing. For example, whenever Gnome fans throw up a screenshot of Gnome and say "looky looky, we look lots better" -- well, as a KDE fan, I have to admit that Gnome does look better. But that's only the icons. Gnome has a better artist working for them somewhere, and KDE could stand to find a master artist of their own. That could be part of KDE 3. As an aside, I prefer KDE because KDE has better widgets. Ever looked at a row of checkboxes in KDE? It's obvious what's checked. Now try that with Gnome. It's not at all obvious to me. KDE has better scrollbars, too. Oh! And one other thing: KDE's default titlebars make great use of "grip" (the bumps that you can "grab" to move the object around), but the rest of KDE pretty much ignores grip. It shouldn't. When you resize a window, the bottom right corner should have grip bumps. Any area that you "grab" that has room for grib bumps should use it, it's a useful visual cue.
But there is another aspect to your post that could stand to be responded to. If 3.0 is not going to be about eye candy, and is instead about the underpinnings of the product, then what about the big criticisms that get lobbed at KDE? Will 3.0 find ways to seriously optimize its code for speed/performance gains? I just skimmed the to-do list, and didn't see speed getting much of a priority. What about reliability? I see that Qt 3 is supposed to deliver some of this. What about the built-in database that comes with 3.0? Can that be used to bring some of the BeOS file management features to Linux? And let's merge the GUI stuff with the speed issues: ever moved your mouse around the screen while an app was launching? Notice the very cool animated icon "attached" to your mouse arrow -- the icon of the app, to let you know it's launching. Well, aside from how cool that feature is, it's also slow -- you can move the mouse arrow all the way across the screen, and the poor animated launch icon will be halfway behind. I'd like to see that fixed. In fact, I'd like to see it completely integrated with the mouse arrow, transforming the arrow icon for those few seconds, to make it visually more cohesive.
To sum up: speed, reliability, speed, reliablity, icons, speed, reliability. That's what I'd like from KDE 3.
Get over it, pirates. Jail is a part of life. When you try to steal something that represents a company's investment in salaried employees and time and planning and manufacturing costs, when you circumvent EULA's rather than refusing to buy or use the product, there are going to be raids. Blame reality. Claiming you HAVE to steal software to play games, as if games are a necessity, is insane. Live on, Feds.
PS: this satire comes courtesy of a Mozilla-using, SuSE Linux-buying, EFF member. I believe open source software is superior. I believe free software obviates the need for theft and copyright infringement. I'm disappointed to see that some people can't be bothered to figure that out for themselves.
Walk down the street. Spot a hot girl. Check if she's single or not, check to see what you have in common. Search a database for the best pick up line. Get constant advice through IRC on what to say and what to do.
Yeah, because we all know that people who hang out on IRC have tons of experience with women.
Now that Google has a historian's wet-dream of actual writings by actual humans as they experienced historic events, such as the falling of the Berlin wall, what are the odds that someone at some point moves to ensure that this information is preserved? I think Google may be thinking very smart here. Their product could become so important that people might actively try to preserve the company, too.
Telling someone "To A, push B" is not teaching, it's more like programming the student. The student will not understand what they are doing.
And of course, this is exactly what the average computer user wants. And it appears to be, in part, the point of the article. Your "better way" involves dressing up the tutorials and how-tos with all this under-the-hood stuff, when the user just wants to press a button and know nothing more about the process. As Linux advocates, we will continually fail to gain acceptance as long as we refuse to give them exactly what they want.
ling, set your router (if you use one) to release the IP, then on Windows boxes run "winipcfg" and release the IP, then restart everything -- reboot the router, reboot the computers. The computers will ask for new info, and the router will give those computers new info.
I think AT&T found a new way of blocking routers on their new network. Has anyone else figured out how they are doing this and how to fix it?
Well, I had the same problem -- my SMC router wasn't working. I called tech support, and after an hour on hold, they asked for my computer's Mac address. I gave them the router's Mac address. Things still didn't work, so they transferred me to the "next level" of support. While on hold, I typed winipcfg in my Windows box's Run menu, and set the computer itself to release/renew it's address. Then I restarted the computer and suddenly it was working. I tried the other computers -- didn't work, like the router was busted. I restarted each computer, and they all began working. So best bet: do a "release" through your router, then reboot it, then do a release/renew on your windoze boxen, then restart every computer.
it appears that the folks who were using AT&T's brand of Excite@Home are back online
Well, most things are working again here in Sunnyvale, California. However, if you call AT&T's tech support line, they indicate trouble in California and few other states. For me, the trouble appears to be that I can get to some big sites like slashdot, but a lot of obscure sites are not coming up. I wonder if this is a caching problem -- anything really popular is still cached by AT&T, anything not popular is a "black hole" for me.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, you're listing off the wrong criteria, and you even know what the real criteria is, since you mention it later in your post: price. Sure, Apple's new iMac is not only fairly priced for what it does, it's a good deal (in my opinion). But that's not what the critics are criticising. They're talking about the low-end offering, which is typically the eMachines/BYO/$400-Compuserve-subsidy computer. The iMac has traditionally been Apple's competitive offering in that area, with a $799 price point. Yes, to these people it is all about price and not features. If Apple releases an iMac with a 12" display, 10 GB drive, 8 MB graphics card, CD player (no R, no RW, no DVD), and keeps the G3, that would be fine if they hit a price of $699 or $799 or even $899. But they don't.
I think what Apple, and even my friends on /. haven't put their fingers on yet is why and who goes for the cheapie boxes. It may be some cheapskates, and some college kids, but a lot of low-end sales are by people who already have a "main" computer or two, and now they're fleshing out the satellites, if you know what I mean. They're building up the peripheral boxes to round out the home. I'm probably an extreme of that, I have 7 computers (including this Samsung NoteMaster 486 laptop, 20 megs of RAM, 75 mhz, which I just got Red Hat onto, cool!). But most families I know nowadays have 2 or 3 computers, and only 1 is good. The others are basically Web/email/solitaire terminals scattered around the house. That's the low-end market, and Apple has just moved out of that market. It may be that the $799 price point just wasn't profitable at all for Apple. But I suspect that it's something else: Steve simply refuses to rip out features to hit the price the critics want. He just won't offer something low-end. It's not Apple's style. I think that's unfortunate, because what I'd really like to do is get an Airport hub, buy one obscenely fast and tricked out Macintosh, and then populate the house with 2 or 3 other el-cheapo Macs. That can't be done with the new line of Apple products.
Well. I thought the film couldn't have been improved. Apparently, I was wrong.
10) Two Towers with a scene altered so that it appears that Solo^H^H^H^HFrodo fired in defense.
And that's the first bug with this system, I think. People will be able to make links to Slashdot that appear visually to be links to other stories or something innocent, but instead these links might actually mass-blacklist a victim if a lot of Slashdotters are fooled into clicking the links. I think these links should be flagged or not allowed in the body of messages.
Look out Usenet, here we come!
You know, I never read the article that is cited here. I did some research on my own about 2 months ago, when I was looking for a video player for my new Linux boxes. And I came to a conclusion that appears to be roughly similar to what people are saying about this article: in short, the MPlayer developers are rude, condescending, and foul-mouthed. I think that is their right. They made it, they can do/say whatever they want about it. But I also think it is legitimate for people to then say "I don't want to associate with these people." And why should you have to, when there is an excellent alternative that also plays Quicktime video (sans Sorenson), and comes in RPM format for SuSE, Red Hat, and Mandrake. So you can get an equally-good player, with more courteous developers to back it up, and with no need to compile unless you enjoy that sort of thing. This is market competition at work, and it appears to me that Xine may be a winning alternative.
There were a lot of threads about this back when slashdot was covering the changeover. But anyway, yes, the 1.5 mbit limit is across the board for AT&T customers, AFAIK. I am limited here in Sunnyvale, California. But while the limitation is noticable (no more insanely fast KaZaA downloads), the switch to AT&T's backbone was so fast (about 3 days, I think) that I really can't complain. Their service has been good. So I'm fairly happy with AT&T, although I would look at better deals.
The one I'm looking forward to is Neverwinter Nights. It's beautiful, and will be released for Linux simultaneously with Windows. It should appeal to both to RPG fans and a little bit to FPS fans -- maybe the Heretic fans. It's due out in March 2002.
It looks like we're actually seeing 99% bug fixes this time around, rather than new features being added. Yay for having a 2.5 branch, it seems to be getting the experimental code now. This may be the first 2.4 kernel I compile for my system (I'm not saying I'm still stuck in 2.2, just that I've kept the default 2.4 kernels from my Mandrake and SuSE installs). I also see a couple ext3 fixes, which means I'm pretty comfortable having this replace the patched-to-use-ext3 2.4.10 kernel in my SuSE 7.3 box.
Not according to the auhor, although he could certainly be lying. At this page (about 5 screens down) he writes:
If true, then I have no problem with this. Blatant copying is not legal, but "clean room" reimplementations have been upheld in court -- this is what Apple did to Xerox, and what Windows did to Apple.
So that's how you make this argument. I have been trying unsuccessfully for quite some time to simplify my thoughts on copyright infringement. Your comment that this is theft of a revenue stream, even if it is an "artifical" one created by laws, sums up exactly what I was trying so miserably to say in a few previous /. posts. I'm disappointed to see that your post is only moderated to a +2. Even if the moderators disagree with your points, they ought to give you credit for being more well-spoken than the rest of us.
Umm. Okay. Well, since you posted as an anonymous coward, I have no idea if you're a KDE developer or just some nerd like me who has an opinion. But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that regardless of who you might be, if you really think the best solution is to let Gnome be the superior tool here, well okay. I disagree with you, but you're free to have an opinion.
I don't see any conceivable way you could say that Gnome's icon of a folder is less usable simply because it looks better. That's absurd.
...And my vote, not having seen all the other themes, would be that yes, this should be the default icon set. It's far stronger than the existing one, but it isn't flashy or obnoxiously kewl. It's just great. The real experts (I'm just a guy who cares enough to make a post or two, not an expert on the system) should decide if iKons falls apart as you drill down into obscure areas (are there icons for everything? or just enough to make the desktop look good?). Or, if it really shines all the way through. If so, I'd be seriously considering this "pre-built" solution.
I concede that the browser icons in the Gnome screenshot look as sucky as KDE's icons. But look at Gnome's folder icon. Look at Gnome's icons in the task bar (the larger icons, probably 48x48 pixels). They're beautiful. The shading behind the folders, the gradient on the folder itself, these are gorgeous icons. In the words of Steve Jobs, these are "lickable" icons. Don't underestimate the power that beauty has to make a work environment more livable and comfortable. KDE needs this.
Hmmm. Well, releasing screenshots certainly invites the user to view the 3.0 release as primarily visual. You can hardly fault the original post for that. But I would make two other points. First: yes, the GUI is lacking in some areas, and could stand some fixing. For example, whenever Gnome fans throw up a screenshot of Gnome and say "looky looky, we look lots better" -- well, as a KDE fan, I have to admit that Gnome does look better. But that's only the icons. Gnome has a better artist working for them somewhere, and KDE could stand to find a master artist of their own. That could be part of KDE 3. As an aside, I prefer KDE because KDE has better widgets. Ever looked at a row of checkboxes in KDE? It's obvious what's checked. Now try that with Gnome. It's not at all obvious to me. KDE has better scrollbars, too. Oh! And one other thing: KDE's default titlebars make great use of "grip" (the bumps that you can "grab" to move the object around), but the rest of KDE pretty much ignores grip. It shouldn't. When you resize a window, the bottom right corner should have grip bumps. Any area that you "grab" that has room for grib bumps should use it, it's a useful visual cue.
But there is another aspect to your post that could stand to be responded to. If 3.0 is not going to be about eye candy, and is instead about the underpinnings of the product, then what about the big criticisms that get lobbed at KDE? Will 3.0 find ways to seriously optimize its code for speed/performance gains? I just skimmed the to-do list, and didn't see speed getting much of a priority. What about reliability? I see that Qt 3 is supposed to deliver some of this. What about the built-in database that comes with 3.0? Can that be used to bring some of the BeOS file management features to Linux? And let's merge the GUI stuff with the speed issues: ever moved your mouse around the screen while an app was launching? Notice the very cool animated icon "attached" to your mouse arrow -- the icon of the app, to let you know it's launching. Well, aside from how cool that feature is, it's also slow -- you can move the mouse arrow all the way across the screen, and the poor animated launch icon will be halfway behind. I'd like to see that fixed. In fact, I'd like to see it completely integrated with the mouse arrow, transforming the arrow icon for those few seconds, to make it visually more cohesive.
To sum up: speed, reliability, speed, reliablity, icons, speed, reliability. That's what I'd like from KDE 3.
Get over it, pirates. Jail is a part of life. When you try to steal something that represents a company's investment in salaried employees and time and planning and manufacturing costs, when you circumvent EULA's rather than refusing to buy or use the product, there are going to be raids. Blame reality. Claiming you HAVE to steal software to play games, as if games are a necessity, is insane. Live on, Feds.
PS: this satire comes courtesy of a Mozilla-using, SuSE Linux-buying, EFF member. I believe open source software is superior. I believe free software obviates the need for theft and copyright infringement. I'm disappointed to see that some people can't be bothered to figure that out for themselves.
Yeah, because we all know that people who hang out on IRC have tons of experience with women.
And SuSE 7.3. Their PowerPC release is sitting on the shelf at Fry's, tempting me daily.
Now that Google has a historian's wet-dream of actual writings by actual humans as they experienced historic events, such as the falling of the Berlin wall, what are the odds that someone at some point moves to ensure that this information is preserved? I think Google may be thinking very smart here. Their product could become so important that people might actively try to preserve the company, too.
Since my article submission is doomed for rejection, let me at least post some of extra stuff I had mentioned. First, check out the monolithic kernel debate between Andy and Linus for yourself. Second, in my article submission about Google, I also mentioned that Alexa now archives the Web, too. Try their Internet Archive Wayback Machine. I found they had an archive of my old WEBsurf magazine from 1997. Hilarious.
And of course, this is exactly what the average computer user wants. And it appears to be, in part, the point of the article. Your "better way" involves dressing up the tutorials and how-tos with all this under-the-hood stuff, when the user just wants to press a button and know nothing more about the process. As Linux advocates, we will continually fail to gain acceptance as long as we refuse to give them exactly what they want.
ling, set your router (if you use one) to release the IP, then on Windows boxes run "winipcfg" and release the IP, then restart everything -- reboot the router, reboot the computers. The computers will ask for new info, and the router will give those computers new info.
Would someone mod the parent up? christopher is making sense.
Well, I had the same problem -- my SMC router wasn't working. I called tech support, and after an hour on hold, they asked for my computer's Mac address. I gave them the router's Mac address. Things still didn't work, so they transferred me to the "next level" of support. While on hold, I typed winipcfg in my Windows box's Run menu, and set the computer itself to release/renew it's address. Then I restarted the computer and suddenly it was working. I tried the other computers -- didn't work, like the router was busted. I restarted each computer, and they all began working. So best bet: do a "release" through your router, then reboot it, then do a release/renew on your windoze boxen, then restart every computer.
Well, most things are working again here in Sunnyvale, California. However, if you call AT&T's tech support line, they indicate trouble in California and few other states. For me, the trouble appears to be that I can get to some big sites like slashdot, but a lot of obscure sites are not coming up. I wonder if this is a caching problem -- anything really popular is still cached by AT&T, anything not popular is a "black hole" for me.