This fact surprises me; it's a Microsoft-perpetuated myth, but Linux users believe it even more than the most ardent Windows user.
Standards ARE NOT PROGRAMS. Here is a list of some common standards, and please don't flame me for what I say or don't say in this list:
ASCII TCP/IP X11 POSIX the Win32 API the i386 instruction set CORBA PostScript
Now, here is a list of some common things which are NOT standards:
vi or Emacs BSD Sockets XFree86 any Unix Windows 9x/NT the Pentium chip KDE or Gnome any PostScript-using device
What is the difference? Notice: everything in the first list is a protocol of some kind. Everything in the second list is an implementation of that protocol, or something which uses that protocol. Note that many different programs can adhere to a standard, each one being possible very different from the others in that category.
This is the thing: standards do not imply a lack of diversity. On the contrary, standards encourage diversity. Why? Because when different programs agree to a given standard, all of those programs can interoperate well, no matter how different they may otherwise be.
I'm going to give a rather controversial example to prove my point. Many people claim that Apple crunches down on consumer choice because it keeps dictatorial control of the standards used on the Mac platform. However, I beg to differ. Case in point: video cards. Without using a single driver, I can use cards from ATI, IXMicro, Mactell, Matrox, Micro Conversions, Village Tronic, and a whole host of others. Yet each of these cards comes with a "driver" to allow the card to perform even better. They are very different cards, and some do things that others do not, yet because they all adhere to the standard protocols defined by Apple, all of them will work well in a Mac, allowing for choice while following some basic rules.
This is what the article is complaining about. Mostly, it is wrong: Linux does have many standards in place. However, it is missing a few (mostly in the area of GUI's, but others do exist), and these are critical. I believe they can be nailed down without having to force any one program out of the market; they'll have to change slightly to agree to a standard but all of them will work, and a user will easily be able to swap one program out for another.
Linux does have most standards nailed down rather well. However, there are some truly critical ones which need to be resolved:
1) Configuration setups. I'm not talking about default configurations here, I'm talking about how a machine is configured. It differes somewhat across distros. This is a Bad Thing, the reason being that it means relearning configuration for each distro. This is not so bad when you only have a few distros out there, as Linux currently does. But what happens when every company suddenly comes out with its own configuration system? 2) GUI API's. X is not a GUI standard; it's a networking protocol on top of which a GUI can be built. This is often forgotten by Linux users (and users of Unix in general). X is also insufficient as a GUI standard. It defines the basic way to get an app running, but it doesn't define interactions between apps. Gnome and KDE are working on this, and they've made a very tiny bit of progress (XDND). But more standards than a drag-and-drop protocol are necessary. This can, by the way, be done without standardizing on one graphics toolkit (this last sentence started to hopefully avert Gnome vs KDE flamewars).
This is the thing: Linux has many standards hashed out. But what it doesn't have is very important. And another thing: ZDNet seems to subscribe to the M$ belief that an application can be a standard. This simply isn't so; protocols and designs, not implementations, are the true standards.
Ay, there's the rub...
on
Red Hat 6.0
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· Score: 1
That's likely why we won't see total KDE integration for most commercial apps. Why? Because for an app to be consistent with KDE (not to support it, true, but most people consider "integration" to include a similar look and feel) you need to use Qt. That puts Troll on the recieving end of a hell of a lot of cash, cash you don't have to pay to develop on any other graphics toolkit, or even any other platform.
My guess is that future commercial apps will support KDE and Gnome both, and be coded in GTK. Towards this end, I would really like to see the KDE and Gnome groups work together more in terms of developing standards. They managed to agree on drag-and-drop, at least, but what about things like object models (as previously mentioned in this thread somewhere)? If the two would work together better I think everything would turn out much better in the end. Those who prefer KDE's interface for whatever reason (there must be one, though I can't figure it out for the life of me) could stick with KDE, those who prefer Gnome's interface could use it, and everyone uses the same apps on both DE's, so everybody's happy.
As for me, I prefer Gnome but keep KDE's libs on my hard drive; I'll probably run across an app I want that needs them someday.
Care to back this up? It sure doesn't jive with what I've seen from Alan Cox on the topic.
Well, since you asked:
1) Inferior processors. Let's face it; Intel makes among the slowest chips on the market today that people actually use in desktop and laptop machines. PPC's beat it, Sparcs beat it, Alphas beat the hell out of it... simply put, it's an old and outdated architecture. 2) Lack of standards. I'm serious. Sure, they've got some: PCI, USB, that sort of thing. But those standards don't go far enough; they define the hardware interface but not the software interface, at least not to a sufficient degree. That's why you still need all those little patches to the OS that you call "drivers" just to make a device work. Before you flame me, yes, I know that Macs have drivers too. But there's a key difference: most Mac peripherals can still work without drivers; the drivers are there for optimizations and such (there's the deflation for the argument that standards "disallow for third-party optimizations"). But I dare you to run Windows or Linux without the driver for the video card in your machine. 3) What standards are there are often inferior. Case in point: AGP. Did you know that the average AGP slot/card in a machine today is actually no faster than a card in a fast PCI slot (yes, these do come in different speeds)? Moreover, AGP works by kludging the video into main memory. Sure, you save a hundred bucks. But you get what you pay for. Another inferior standard: IDE. Again, cheaper than its competitors, but for a reason: it's slower and less reliable (which is why I'm still wondering as to why Apple switched to it; they cut corners to save a buck). Then, of course, there's MMX and KNI. Have you ever read up on how those two actually work? It's very interesting reading, and proof that these "great multimedia standards" are really little more than more kludges to keep the tired Pentium architecture to a point where it's only a little behind the more advanced technology in every other desktop machine currently being sold.
The point: The average PC sacrifices performance and reliability just to save a few bucks. That is why it isn't mature enough.
Personally, mabye I'm just negative, but i think that this insane mass trusting of apples new buzzword is gonna get us in trouble. Why work on there OS when we have an already better OS (Linux or a BSD 4.4 light) that has better licencing anyway?
Better licensing: perhaps. Better OS: Are you so certain? Though it will likely pain the Linux community to hear this, every Linux user I've talked to who actually tried OSX was an instant OSX convert (though not all switched due to price concerns). Your words imply that you've never tried OSX; you therefore lose all right to call it better or worse than anything else until you've tried it.
Apple has been the king of propieitary for since it was created, don't you people know we still can't run linux on a lot of there hardware?
You can run LinuxPPC on a lot of their hardware, including every PCI-based PowerMac ever made except for the odd Performa model or two (last I checked the Blue G3's just got support; iMacs have had it for several months). Add MkLinux into the mix and you have almost every PowerPC-based Mac ever made. Throw the m68k port in and you have still more; granted you don't have all 68K-based Macs but you have quite a few.
To the Mac users: Run LinuxPPC if you want Open Source. Fuck Apple.
I do run Linux. I'm also going to run OSX when it's released (Server's out of my price range, unfortuantely). I don't have this odd prejudice you seem to carry.
Open-Source does, in fact, limit consumer choice. This is even stated in the GNU Manifesto; one of its ultimate goals is to "eliminate competition."
However, the result isn't another Microsoft, even in this scenario. Why? Because even though there is one (insert type of software here), people are not limited by the whims of one company. The ideology behind Open-Source, or at least part of it, is that if a piece of software lacks something you want, you can add it to that piece of software.
Now, about the whole "programmers will starve" bit: that's nonsense. However, the job of the programmer will change significantly. A programmer will no longer be able to be just a coder (though, in the ideal scenario, other people will be contributing, and this makes up for that coder's abscence). The programmer will also have to support the program; there is, after all, no better person to provide upport for a program than the person who made it (assuming that person has the proper communication skills; something which will also become necessary for a programmer to have).
Will they make as much as they do now? Probably not. Some might, certainly the best would. Consultants probably would, as companies maintaining software pay them to undertake big jobs. But not all programmers would; the times are changing, and those who fail to change with it will likely be lost.
I think he's trying to compare Lynx to an old car that has to run on leaded gas. And in one sense, I suppose, he's right.
However, I find a disturbing trend among the people posting here: those in favor of this idea seem to insist that all WYSIWYG editors are evil and are the cause of this problem. Actually, they're not: a perfectly Lynx-compliant site can be constructed in an editor.
What makes these sites unaccessible is stuff like images without ALT tags, recorded speeches when a transcript is not posted, and things like that. Now granted, I tend to work a lot in "hand-crafted HTML" myself, but I use a WYSIWYG editor for the basic design (I then hand-code the pages based off of that design). Nonetheless, I make sure my page displays acceptably in all sorts of browsers, from Netscape to IE to iCab all the way back to WebTV and Lynx. Sure, I do use enhancements in some places, but never those which cripple the page on another browser (or, if they do, I provide alternative access to the data). It's not terribly difficult.
WYSIWYG editors are not Bad Things. It's the designers who misuse them. These editors are meant to be tools, not crutches.
But it could have been much worse. This is likely the ending for the EvangeList that Guy Kawasaki dreamed of: the EvangeList ended because it is no longer needed. Not because Apple died. Not because someone sued. Not because Billy won. Because Apple won a major victory (if you'll check the latest stats, Apple's market share in the retail channel has gone past 10% once again). And, from all indications, it's only going to get better for the foreseeable future.
And, as in all great legends, the EvangeList will return in the Mac's time of greatest need to vanquish all enemies and secure the Mac's place in the industry once and for all. Wait; Apple already secured its place in the industry. Oh well; you know what I mean...
Seriously, though, this idea that power and ease of use are mutually exclusive is a myth. It takes careful thought and planning, and yes, it's often quite boring. That's probably why many Linux developers don't do it, and they perpetuate this myth as a way of rationalizing it. It's quite sad, but it's the way it goes.
>I hate to >*pop* your little bubble, but the Mac >interface was designed by programmers.
Yes, it was. After a couple of years of study be psychologists, interface experts, and such. The final interface, perhaps. But they stood on the shoulders of giants, or experts in this case.
>Almost all of the research done in human/computer >interfaces for the Mac has contributed little tiny >modifications; the original interface was written >by programmers who saw a similar interface at >PARC; and that interface too was designed by >programmers.
You're right about the PARC interface being designed by programmers, but have you ever seen that interface? It and the Mac interface have very little in common (the WIMP concept, and that's about it).
The program's controls are at the top of the screen, as far away from the actual application as possible.
Wrong. See, here's the thing: I take it you can read English. How is English read? Top to bottom, left to right. Notice: the menubar (the most-often used set of controls) is at the top left. It's a psychological thing, you see. This is also why the trash can is at the bottom right (the last thing you read on the page, therefore the lowest-priority, therefore a good place to put the control representing the most destructive actions you can do).
Please don't get into other languages here; this is not meant as an insult to those languages which are read in different directions.
Also, windows keep disappearing.
It's called closing the window. Or, when you're switching apps, it's called hiding extraneous palettes that you're not going to need when you're working in one application. And make no mistake: even if a computer can multitask a human can only work in one app at a time. I offer the following challenge to prove my point: start up any two X applications (any other platform will do, but I'm guessing you'll be using X). Make one of those applications active. Now, work in the other application without leaving the first. If the window of the first application loses focus, you are considered to have left it.
I'm never allowed to launch more than one instance of an application, so if the application isn't programmed to allow more than one open window, I'm screwed.
That's the fault of a poorly-programmed application, not the OS. By the way, while we're on the subject, please open up two distinct instances of Netscape (in other words, no just opening a second Netscape window; open another xterm and start Netscape from there without quitting the first one). Bet you can't do it without one instance or the other complaining.
There's only one mouse button-- you have to use the keyboard if you want to emulate more than on button.
Nobody needs more than one. It can come in handy, but it encourages convoluted, confusing, horrible interfaces like XFig's.
And this sucks if you are missing an arm. (This is more than a nitpick-- I've worked in a university environment where I've had to help disabled people like that.)
News flash: lots of things suck if you are missing an arm. Ever tried typing with one arm? I'm doing it right now, actually. It sucks. Keyboards were designed for both arms; its width becomes a hindrance to someone typing with one hand. Yes, there are keyboards designed to be used with one hand; some of them are even pretty nifty. There are also pointing devices designed to be used with no hands.
This addresses just the basic ease-of-use GUI choices-- it doesn't even touch on the more complicated technical issues (such as the lack of pipes, redirection, and CLI).
Pipes: a nice convenience, but nothing which can't be worked around with exceedingly simple scripts and a properly-done application.
Redirection: same thing. It merely requires a properly-done app... OH, THE HORROR! The programmer might have to do some extra work!
CLI: Unnecessary. Let's not even go there; I can do everything with a GUI that you can with a command-line; the reverse isn't true. The best would be natural-language processing (which is more akin to a CLI than a GUI, admittedly) but we're decades away from that at least. As evidence I present Forum2000. Assuming it's not a hoax, it's a massive cluster of Alphas totalling, I believe, 32 terabits of RAM. It's the only thing out there even capable of natural-language processing, it still makes some mistakes, and it can't even do it in realtime. In other words, we're a long way off from that.
Plus, have you ever wondered why it took so long to change anything but the most cosmetic aspects of MacOS? It's because the core OS was poorly designed. Copeland failed because it was hard to add basic pre-emptive multitasking.
That had nothing to do with it; Copland was a total rewrite of the OS, which would in fact have required something not unlike the OSX Blue Box to run current MacOS programs. Copland failed for other reasons.
I might also add that back when MacOS was created, few people, including most current Slashdot readers, had even heard of preeemptive multitasking. The guts of an OS don't matter anyway, if it works correctly (which is why Windows still sucks even though it has partial memory protection and pseudo-preemptive multitasking; it still doesn't work, where MacOS at least does a better job of it than the stuff Redmond puts out).
I think I've risked starting enough flamewars for today (without intending to start any, I might add; if any of this is flamebait is is not intended to be so).
I think that having a negative alignment should still be possible, for someone who consistently flames (or MEEPT!) This helps to discourage such things, since almost everyone reads with a threshold of at least 0 (so to get out of the hole a person has to consistently get posts moderated up above that mark).
The first chip to use "G3" technologies was actually not 603-based (like the current one, the 750 is now). It was a 604 variant, known as the Mach 5 604e. And as a chip, it was in fact better than the G3. But it lacked one thing the 750 had: backside cache. This turned out to make the 750-based systems a great deal faster overall than Mach 5 604e-based one, even though the performance of the chip was worse.
The 750 was originally intended to be a low-end-systems chip. The original G3's were supposed to be low-end, with higher-end six-slot machines based on that Mach 5 chip coming up later. Apple scrapped that idea because the original G3 did so well (I do wish they'd go to six slots though, though having more than three does jack up the price of building a system significantly due to the PCI bridge you then have to add to the motherboard).
I'll believe it when I hear it from someone at Apple. This article is just anti-PPC FUD, probably because the G3 is faster than any Merced chip on the market (wait... there are no Merced chips on the market! Silly me...) and the G4 will be faster still.
This'll be fun, watching the G5 (what'll probably be out by the time Merced is released) thrash Merced around...
The only thing holding me back from even considering the PPC platform is the lack of the ablilty for me to get the parts to build me one. You can get a Mac board (one specific kind) I am told, but you are limited by the onboard junk that cant be replaced and has only three PCI slots. I want to be able to get EXACTLY what I want. Not what some ignorant company thinks everyone should have.
Whine, whine, whine.
Look, perhaps you should be looking into Apple's BTO options. You'll find that it has more options than you seem to think. Also, ever thought about getting an older motherboard, say, one for a 9600? You could make a sweet system out of that (6 PCI slots, oodles of RAM expandability, daughtercard-upgradable processor, etc).
I am sorry, but I am not letting Apple shove their Moldy iMacs and Blue Trash Cans down my throat as an acceptable computer system.
Why not?
Another thing that they need is to get rid of their arrogant attitude about everything and making rediculus/frivilous claims in attempt to boost public appearance.
I'd agree with you, except for one thing: their claims are justified. Or perhaps you could point me to one which wasn't? (and don't even start with that "up to twice as fast" crap; while BYTEmark might have said that of the G3 it should be known that other benchmark tests which I suppose you'd consider more "appropriate" for reasons I don't understand found the Mach 5 604e to be even faster).
Honestly, it's not that hard. Lots of multibutton mice exist out there. A well-coded app should never need more than one (witness Gimp, which no longer requires more than one thanks to some thought they put into the interface of the 1.1.x tree). But agreed: two are nice for shortcuts. Three? It just invites horrible interfaces (such as XFig; I use the program a lot but honestly, those guys need to learn way more than a few things about UI design, though the most critical thing would be learning that not all of us have 19-inch monitors). It would help if more Linux program authors put some real thought into their interfaces.
As for the mouse being designed for a child's hand: I'll have to agree with you. The mouse is awful. Then again, if I got an iMac I'd likely buy a trackball instead.
A dojo is a martial arts training hall. Technically this only applies to Japanese martial arte (in Korean it's dojang, in Chinese I believe it's kwoon, and so on) but it has become a generic term.
By the way, I am a hacker, and I do hang out in a dojo (have since long before I became a hacker).
Did you know that Sony loses money on every single PSX console it sells? Not only that, but it'll lose even more money on every PSX2.
So how does Sony make money off the PSX? Software licensing. It gets a cut of every game made for the PlayStation. That's one hell of a lot of cash, way more than enough to make up for the losses it incurs selling the consoles. The point: Sony is actually saving money when emulators are sold; it does not lose them.
Now, as to hexing the program to run gold: that's a lot harder than you would have us believe. Perhaps, eventually, someone will do it. But as you said, even your grandmother's PSX is modded; this won't promote piracy any more than the average modchip.
Finally, you assume that the emulator cannot possibly be 100% cleanroom. I admit, I have my doubts as to how such an emulator could have been developed so quickly by so few people. But it is always possible. It's not easy by any stratch of the imagination, but it's possible.
So, with all due respect to the families who were affected by this tragedy, this suit has "Ambulance Chaser" and "Religious Extremism" written all over it.
It's fairly evident this suit has virtually nothing to do with recovering damages for a tragic loss, and nearly everything to do with advancing a misguided political and social agenda. It's impossible to say from the brief news release whether this was hatched by the parents, the laywers, or someone else.
In the past, parents stricken with such a tragic loss have traditionally formed memorial foundations, whose goal is to raise awareness of the conditions that contributed to their loved one's death. MADD, The Polly Klaas Foundation, and others come to mind. I would counsel the parents in this situation to do the same. It is a far more lasting and constructive contribution they could make than any contrived lawsuit could ever hope to accomplish.
I disagree about the religious extremism bit; I don't remember them mentioning anything of a religious nature. As for the "ambulance chaser" bit, well, you may have a point there. But look at what they said. "We intend to hurt..."
This is revenge. That's all. This kid hurt them, so the parents are going to hurt what they believe caused the kid to freak out. This is especially sad since they're aiming at the wrong target, but the fact remains: this suit has no nobler motivations than vengeance.
Take another look at the game developers that are being sued: Sega and Nintendo. Now, take a look at the games being accused of "influencing" this guy: Doon, Quake, and Mortal Kombat.
What's wrong with this picture? Perhaps these parents should at least be suing the companies that make the games they hate so much?
Actually, if they're suing anyone it should be the parents of the shooter (notice that the parents of the shooter are not involved in this case at all) for doing a damn poor joob of raising a kid who couldn't even distinguish between fantasy and reality enough to refrain from going on a shooting rampage.
I disagree. There is a very clear-cut line between fantasy and reality. I think it's obvious what side of that line video games are. Those who cannot see the line (due to being raised badly, the probably culprit in this particular case, or being just plain wacko for whatever reason) should not be blaming others for acts they committed. It's rather like that one guy who said he went on a killing spree because he'd eaten so many Twinkies that he had gone crazy (this was a looooooooong time ago; you probably will be hard-pressed to fine a Web link to it).
You're a bit mixed up, I'm afraid, over the GIF issue. Unisys was being idiotic over a patent they held on the LZW compression algorithm, which is used in compressing GIF images. They were not being idiotic over a copyright.
Copyrights are Good Things, when used correctly (an example: the GPL). It's patents which are causing all the trouble. Here's why:
Let's say Unisys had copyrights on their code for the LZW compression algorithm. I could write my own code for LZW if I wished, and release it. I have violated no laws by doing so, because copyrights only cover one specific set of code.
However, Unisys has a patent on the underlying algorithm. This means that I cannot write any code for LZW compression at all, because they have patented the idea (which I didn't think was supposed to be legal). Even if every single line of my code is different from the code Unisys uses, I have still violated their patent. Is that right? I don't think so.
The difference between a copyright and a deed is actually critical. Why?
A deed represents something tangible and scarce (that is, not in infinite supply). It does not represent any effort at all. It represents a thing. And this is good; it established the owner of that land.
A copyright represents, essentially, thought. How can someone own a thought? The paper it's printed on, yes. Or perhaps the media. But the thought itself? That cannot be owned. For that matter, it cannot really be given away, for the giver loses nothing in the giving (indeed, it can be said that an idea is worthless unless shared, for only when shared can it be acted upon).
Now, I don't think copyrights are in and of themselves bad things, but they're being horribly misused in the case of software (and don't even get me started on the idea of patents for software). But that's for another debate.
1) We'd all be using X all the time because it's kind of hard to show a parade of advertising pics at the bottom of the console. 2) Instead of a penguin, we'd have that dog from the Taco Bell commercials for a mascot 3) Tonight on Springer: vi/Emacs mixed marriages; can they survive? And a special segment: how to pronounce "Linux." 4) "We're sorry, this program is blacked out in your area" suddenly takes on a whole new meaning. 5) Al Gore would try to take credit over the Net for creating the media.
...anyone got any others? This one just begs for jokes to be made. Honestly, how clueless can this writer be?
I notice people saying how you can't shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater when there is no fire and such things, pointing to those as how free speech could be limited. This is not really true. THere are absolutely no limits of speech in this country, nor should there be. However, if you commit a crime with that speech, the first amendment will not save you The "Fire!" example is a case of disturbing the peace; you have the right to free speech but you do not have the right to commit a crime with that speech. The same goes for selling state secrets. It is not a crime to speak, but it is a crime (not to mention a breach of contract) to tell those things to unauthorized persons.
Can a crime be committed with source code? Possibly. I don't see how, but it's possible. And if such, it could still be prosecuted even if software were protected by the first amendment.
Doesn't matter. It's already been decided by the Supreme Court that expression counts as speech. To give an example: flag-burning. It can be done without speaking a single word, yet the Supreme Court has decided that it is still protected by the First Amendment. Therefore, it doesn't matter if code is speech or expression, it'd still be protected.
Now, here's the argument against it: people claim that source code is a device, not speech. Certainly this is true of compiled code; it does something. But I'd love to see you boot a Linux kernel using only the course, without compiling it first. It does not work. Why? Because source code is nothing more than instructions for the compiler to create the device, not unlike a recipe. Therefore I'd say it's a form of expression, and consequently is protected.
But what do I know; I'm not one of the technologically clueless lawmakers out there today.
Slashdot Mirror
This fact surprises me; it's a Microsoft-perpetuated myth, but Linux users believe it even more than the most ardent Windows user.
Standards ARE NOT PROGRAMS. Here is a list of some common standards, and please don't flame me for what I say or don't say in this list:
ASCII
TCP/IP
X11
POSIX
the Win32 API
the i386 instruction set
CORBA
PostScript
Now, here is a list of some common things which are NOT standards:
vi or Emacs
BSD Sockets
XFree86
any Unix
Windows 9x/NT
the Pentium chip
KDE or Gnome
any PostScript-using device
What is the difference? Notice: everything in the first list is a protocol of some kind. Everything in the second list is an implementation of that protocol, or something which uses that protocol. Note that many different programs can adhere to a standard, each one being possible very different from the others in that category.
This is the thing: standards do not imply a lack of diversity. On the contrary, standards encourage diversity. Why? Because when different programs agree to a given standard, all of those programs can interoperate well, no matter how different they may otherwise be.
I'm going to give a rather controversial example to prove my point. Many people claim that Apple crunches down on consumer choice because it keeps dictatorial control of the standards used on the Mac platform. However, I beg to differ. Case in point: video cards. Without using a single driver, I can use cards from ATI, IXMicro, Mactell, Matrox, Micro Conversions, Village Tronic, and a whole host of others. Yet each of these cards comes with a "driver" to allow the card to perform even better. They are very different cards, and some do things that others do not, yet because they all adhere to the standard protocols defined by Apple, all of them will work well in a Mac, allowing for choice while following some basic rules.
This is what the article is complaining about. Mostly, it is wrong: Linux does have many standards in place. However, it is missing a few (mostly in the area of GUI's, but others do exist), and these are critical. I believe they can be nailed down without having to force any one program out of the market; they'll have to change slightly to agree to a standard but all of them will work, and a user will easily be able to swap one program out for another.
Linux does have most standards nailed down rather well. However, there are some truly critical ones which need to be resolved:
1) Configuration setups. I'm not talking about default configurations here, I'm talking about how a machine is configured. It differes somewhat across distros. This is a Bad Thing, the reason being that it means relearning configuration for each distro. This is not so bad when you only have a few distros out there, as Linux currently does. But what happens when every company suddenly comes out with its own configuration system?
2) GUI API's. X is not a GUI standard; it's a networking protocol on top of which a GUI can be built. This is often forgotten by Linux users (and users of Unix in general). X is also insufficient as a GUI standard. It defines the basic way to get an app running, but it doesn't define interactions between apps. Gnome and KDE are working on this, and they've made a very tiny bit of progress (XDND). But more standards than a drag-and-drop protocol are necessary. This can, by the way, be done without standardizing on one graphics toolkit (this last sentence started to hopefully avert Gnome vs KDE flamewars).
This is the thing: Linux has many standards hashed out. But what it doesn't have is very important.
And another thing: ZDNet seems to subscribe to the M$ belief that an application can be a standard. This simply isn't so; protocols and designs, not implementations, are the true standards.
That's likely why we won't see total KDE integration for most commercial apps. Why? Because for an app to be consistent with KDE (not to support it, true, but most people consider "integration" to include a similar look and feel) you need to use Qt. That puts Troll on the recieving end of a hell of a lot of cash, cash you don't have to pay to develop on any other graphics toolkit, or even any other platform.
My guess is that future commercial apps will support KDE and Gnome both, and be coded in GTK. Towards this end, I would really like to see the KDE and Gnome groups work together more in terms of developing standards. They managed to agree on drag-and-drop, at least, but what about things like object models (as previously mentioned in this thread somewhere)? If the two would work together better I think everything would turn out much better in the end. Those who prefer KDE's interface for whatever reason (there must be one, though I can't figure it out for the life of me) could stick with KDE, those who prefer Gnome's interface could use it, and everyone uses the same apps on both DE's, so everybody's happy.
As for me, I prefer Gnome but keep KDE's libs on my hard drive; I'll probably run across an app I want that needs them someday.
Care to back this up? It sure doesn't jive with what I've seen from Alan Cox on the topic.
Well, since you asked:
1) Inferior processors. Let's face it; Intel makes among the slowest chips on the market today that people actually use in desktop and laptop machines. PPC's beat it, Sparcs beat it, Alphas beat the hell out of it... simply put, it's an old and outdated architecture.
2) Lack of standards. I'm serious. Sure, they've got some: PCI, USB, that sort of thing. But those standards don't go far enough; they define the hardware interface but not the software interface, at least not to a sufficient degree. That's why you still need all those little patches to the OS that you call "drivers" just to make a device work. Before you flame me, yes, I know that Macs have drivers too. But there's a key difference: most Mac peripherals can still work without drivers; the drivers are there for optimizations and such (there's the deflation for the argument that standards "disallow for third-party optimizations"). But I dare you to run Windows or Linux without the driver for the video card in your machine.
3) What standards are there are often inferior. Case in point: AGP. Did you know that the average AGP slot/card in a machine today is actually no faster than a card in a fast PCI slot (yes, these do come in different speeds)? Moreover, AGP works by kludging the video into main memory. Sure, you save a hundred bucks. But you get what you pay for. Another inferior standard: IDE. Again, cheaper than its competitors, but for a reason: it's slower and less reliable (which is why I'm still wondering as to why Apple switched to it; they cut corners to save a buck).
Then, of course, there's MMX and KNI. Have you ever read up on how those two actually work? It's very interesting reading, and proof that these "great multimedia standards" are really little more than more kludges to keep the tired Pentium architecture to a point where it's only a little behind the more advanced technology in every other desktop machine currently being sold.
The point: The average PC sacrifices performance and reliability just to save a few bucks. That is why it isn't mature enough.
Personally, mabye I'm just negative, but i think that this insane mass trusting of apples new buzzword is gonna get us in trouble. Why work on there OS when we have an already better OS (Linux or a BSD 4.4 light) that has better licencing anyway?
Better licensing: perhaps.
Better OS: Are you so certain? Though it will likely pain the Linux community to hear this, every Linux user I've talked to who actually tried OSX was an instant OSX convert (though not all switched due to price concerns). Your words imply that you've never tried OSX; you therefore lose all right to call it better or worse than anything else until you've tried it.
Apple has been the king of propieitary for since it was created, don't you people know we still can't run linux on a lot of there hardware?
You can run LinuxPPC on a lot of their hardware, including every PCI-based PowerMac ever made except for the odd Performa model or two (last I checked the Blue G3's just got support; iMacs have had it for several months). Add MkLinux into the mix and you have almost every PowerPC-based Mac ever made. Throw the m68k port in and you have still more; granted you don't have all 68K-based Macs but you have quite a few.
To the Mac users: Run LinuxPPC if you want Open Source. Fuck Apple.
I do run Linux. I'm also going to run OSX when it's released (Server's out of my price range, unfortuantely). I don't have this odd prejudice you seem to carry.
Open-Source does, in fact, limit consumer choice. This is even stated in the GNU Manifesto; one of its ultimate goals is to "eliminate competition."
However, the result isn't another Microsoft, even in this scenario. Why? Because even though there is one (insert type of software here), people are not limited by the whims of one company. The ideology behind Open-Source, or at least part of it, is that if a piece of software lacks something you want, you can add it to that piece of software.
Now, about the whole "programmers will starve" bit: that's nonsense. However, the job of the programmer will change significantly. A programmer will no longer be able to be just a coder (though, in the ideal scenario, other people will be contributing, and this makes up for that coder's abscence). The programmer will also have to support the program; there is, after all, no better person to provide upport for a program than the person who made it (assuming that person has the proper communication skills; something which will also become necessary for a programmer to have).
Will they make as much as they do now? Probably not. Some might, certainly the best would. Consultants probably would, as companies maintaining software pay them to undertake big jobs. But not all programmers would; the times are changing, and those who fail to change with it will likely be lost.
I think he's trying to compare Lynx to an old car that has to run on leaded gas. And in one sense, I suppose, he's right.
However, I find a disturbing trend among the people posting here: those in favor of this idea seem to insist that all WYSIWYG editors are evil and are the cause of this problem. Actually, they're not: a perfectly Lynx-compliant site can be constructed in an editor.
What makes these sites unaccessible is stuff like images without ALT tags, recorded speeches when a transcript is not posted, and things like that. Now granted, I tend to work a lot in "hand-crafted HTML" myself, but I use a WYSIWYG editor for the basic design (I then hand-code the pages based off of that design). Nonetheless, I make sure my page displays acceptably in all sorts of browsers, from Netscape to IE to iCab all the way back to WebTV and Lynx. Sure, I do use enhancements in some places, but never those which cripple the page on another browser (or, if they do, I provide alternative access to the data). It's not terribly difficult.
WYSIWYG editors are not Bad Things. It's the designers who misuse them. These editors are meant to be tools, not crutches.
But it could have been much worse. This is likely the ending for the EvangeList that Guy Kawasaki dreamed of: the EvangeList ended because it is no longer needed. Not because Apple died. Not because someone sued. Not because Billy won. Because Apple won a major victory (if you'll check the latest stats, Apple's market share in the retail channel has gone past 10% once again). And, from all indications, it's only going to get better for the foreseeable future.
And, as in all great legends, the EvangeList will return in the Mac's time of greatest need to vanquish all enemies and secure the Mac's place in the industry once and for all. Wait; Apple already secured its place in the industry. Oh well; you know what I mean...
One word: GIMP.
Seriously, though, this idea that power and ease of use are mutually exclusive is a myth. It takes careful thought and planning, and yes, it's often quite boring. That's probably why many Linux developers don't do it, and they perpetuate this myth as a way of rationalizing it. It's quite sad, but it's the way it goes.
>I hate to >*pop* your little bubble, but the Mac
>interface was designed by programmers.
Yes, it was. After a couple of years of study be psychologists, interface experts, and such. The final interface, perhaps. But they stood on the shoulders of giants, or experts in this case.
>Almost all of the research done in human/computer
>interfaces for the Mac has contributed little tiny
>modifications; the original interface was written
>by programmers who saw a similar interface at
>PARC; and that interface too was designed by
>programmers.
You're right about the PARC interface being designed by programmers, but have you ever seen that interface? It and the Mac interface have very little in common (the WIMP concept, and that's about it).
The program's controls are at the top of the screen, as far away from the actual application as possible.
Wrong. See, here's the thing: I take it you can read English. How is English read? Top to bottom, left to right. Notice: the menubar (the most-often used set of controls) is at the top left. It's a psychological thing, you see. This is also why the trash can is at the bottom right (the last thing you read on the page, therefore the lowest-priority, therefore a good place to put the control representing the most destructive actions you can do).
Please don't get into other languages here; this is not meant as an insult to those languages which are read in different directions.
Also, windows keep disappearing.
It's called closing the window. Or, when you're switching apps, it's called hiding extraneous palettes that you're not going to need when you're working in one application. And make no mistake: even if a computer can multitask a human can only work in one app at a time. I offer the following challenge to prove my point: start up any two X applications (any other platform will do, but I'm guessing you'll be using X). Make one of those applications active. Now, work in the other application without leaving the first. If the window of the first application loses focus, you are considered to have left it.
I'm never allowed to launch more than one instance of an application, so if the application isn't programmed to allow more than one open window, I'm screwed.
That's the fault of a poorly-programmed application, not the OS. By the way, while we're on the subject, please open up two distinct instances of Netscape (in other words, no just opening a second Netscape window; open another xterm and start Netscape from there without quitting the first one). Bet you can't do it without one instance or the other complaining.
There's only one mouse button-- you have to use the keyboard if you want to emulate more than on button.
Nobody needs more than one. It can come in handy, but it encourages convoluted, confusing, horrible interfaces like XFig's.
And this sucks if you are missing an arm. (This is more than a nitpick-- I've worked in a university environment where I've had to help disabled people like that.)
News flash: lots of things suck if you are missing an arm. Ever tried typing with one arm? I'm doing it right now, actually. It sucks. Keyboards were designed for both arms; its width becomes a hindrance to someone typing with one hand. Yes, there are keyboards designed to be used with one hand; some of them are even pretty nifty. There are also pointing devices designed to be used with no hands.
This addresses just the basic ease-of-use GUI choices-- it doesn't even touch on the more complicated technical issues (such as the lack of pipes, redirection, and CLI).
Pipes: a nice convenience, but nothing which can't be worked around with exceedingly simple scripts and a properly-done application.
Redirection: same thing. It merely requires a properly-done app... OH, THE HORROR! The programmer might have to do some extra work!
CLI: Unnecessary. Let's not even go there; I can do everything with a GUI that you can with a command-line; the reverse isn't true. The best would be natural-language processing (which is more akin to a CLI than a GUI, admittedly) but we're decades away from that at least. As evidence I present Forum2000. Assuming it's not a hoax, it's a massive cluster of Alphas totalling, I believe, 32 terabits of RAM. It's the only thing out there even capable of natural-language processing, it still makes some mistakes, and it can't even do it in realtime. In other words, we're a long way off from that.
Plus, have you ever wondered why it took so long to change anything but the most cosmetic aspects of MacOS? It's because the core OS was poorly designed. Copeland failed because it was hard to add basic pre-emptive multitasking.
That had nothing to do with it; Copland was a total rewrite of the OS, which would in fact have required something not unlike the OSX Blue Box to run current MacOS programs. Copland failed for other reasons.
I might also add that back when MacOS was created, few people, including most current Slashdot readers, had even heard of preeemptive multitasking. The guts of an OS don't matter anyway, if it works correctly (which is why Windows still sucks even though it has partial memory protection and pseudo-preemptive multitasking; it still doesn't work, where MacOS at least does a better job of it than the stuff Redmond puts out).
I think I've risked starting enough flamewars for today (without intending to start any, I might add; if any of this is flamebait is is not intended to be so).
I think that having a negative alignment should still be possible, for someone who consistently flames (or MEEPT!) This helps to discourage such things, since almost everyone reads with a threshold of at least 0 (so to get out of the hole a person has to consistently get posts moderated up above that mark).
The first chip to use "G3" technologies was actually not 603-based (like the current one, the 750 is now). It was a 604 variant, known as the Mach 5 604e. And as a chip, it was in fact better than the G3. But it lacked one thing the 750 had: backside cache. This turned out to make the 750-based systems a great deal faster overall than Mach 5 604e-based one, even though the performance of the chip was worse.
The 750 was originally intended to be a low-end-systems chip. The original G3's were supposed to be low-end, with higher-end six-slot machines based on that Mach 5 chip coming up later. Apple scrapped that idea because the original G3 did so well (I do wish they'd go to six slots though, though having more than three does jack up the price of building a system significantly due to the PCI bridge you then have to add to the motherboard).
I'll believe it when I hear it from someone at Apple. This article is just anti-PPC FUD, probably because the G3 is faster than any Merced chip on the market (wait... there are no Merced chips on the market! Silly me...) and the G4 will be faster still.
This'll be fun, watching the G5 (what'll probably be out by the time Merced is released) thrash Merced around...
The only thing holding me back from even considering the PPC platform is the lack of the ablilty for me to get the parts to build me one. You can get a Mac board (one specific kind) I am told, but you are limited by the onboard junk that cant be replaced and has only three PCI slots. I want to be able to get EXACTLY what I want. Not what some ignorant company thinks everyone should have.
Whine, whine, whine.
Look, perhaps you should be looking into Apple's BTO options. You'll find that it has more options than you seem to think. Also, ever thought about getting an older motherboard, say, one for a 9600? You could make a sweet system out of that (6 PCI slots, oodles of RAM expandability, daughtercard-upgradable processor, etc).
I am sorry, but I am not letting Apple shove their Moldy iMacs and Blue Trash Cans down my throat as an acceptable computer system.
Why not?
Another thing that they need is to get rid of their arrogant attitude about everything and making rediculus/frivilous claims in attempt to boost public appearance.
I'd agree with you, except for one thing: their claims are justified. Or perhaps you could point me to one which wasn't? (and don't even start with that "up to twice as fast" crap; while BYTEmark might have said that of the G3 it should be known that other benchmark tests which I suppose you'd consider more "appropriate" for reasons I don't understand found the Mach 5 604e to be even faster).
Honestly, it's not that hard. Lots of multibutton mice exist out there. A well-coded app should never need more than one (witness Gimp, which no longer requires more than one thanks to some thought they put into the interface of the 1.1.x tree). But agreed: two are nice for shortcuts. Three? It just invites horrible interfaces (such as XFig; I use the program a lot but honestly, those guys need to learn way more than a few things about UI design, though the most critical thing would be learning that not all of us have 19-inch monitors). It would help if more Linux program authors put some real thought into their interfaces.
As for the mouse being designed for a child's hand: I'll have to agree with you. The mouse is awful. Then again, if I got an iMac I'd likely buy a trackball instead.
A dojo is a martial arts training hall. Technically this only applies to Japanese martial arte (in Korean it's dojang, in Chinese I believe it's kwoon, and so on) but it has become a generic term.
By the way, I am a hacker, and I do hang out in a dojo (have since long before I became a hacker).
Did you know that Sony loses money on every single PSX console it sells? Not only that, but it'll lose even more money on every PSX2.
So how does Sony make money off the PSX? Software licensing. It gets a cut of every game made for the PlayStation. That's one hell of a lot of cash, way more than enough to make up for the losses it incurs selling the consoles. The point: Sony is actually saving money when emulators are sold; it does not lose them.
Now, as to hexing the program to run gold: that's a lot harder than you would have us believe. Perhaps, eventually, someone will do it. But as you said, even your grandmother's PSX is modded; this won't promote piracy any more than the average modchip.
Finally, you assume that the emulator cannot possibly be 100% cleanroom. I admit, I have my doubts as to how such an emulator could have been developed so quickly by so few people. But it is always possible. It's not easy by any stratch of the imagination, but it's possible.
So, with all due respect to the families who were affected by this tragedy, this suit has "Ambulance Chaser" and "Religious Extremism" written all over it.
It's fairly evident this suit has virtually nothing to do with recovering damages for a tragic loss, and nearly everything to do with advancing a misguided political and social agenda. It's impossible to say from the brief news release whether this was hatched by the parents, the laywers, or someone else.
In the past, parents stricken with such a tragic loss have traditionally formed memorial foundations, whose goal is to raise awareness of the conditions that contributed to their loved one's death. MADD, The Polly Klaas Foundation, and others come to mind. I would counsel the parents in this situation to do the same. It is a far more lasting and constructive contribution they could make than any contrived lawsuit could ever hope to accomplish.
I disagree about the religious extremism bit; I don't remember them mentioning anything of a religious nature. As for the "ambulance chaser" bit, well, you may have a point there. But look at what they said. "We intend to hurt..."
This is revenge. That's all. This kid hurt them, so the parents are going to hurt what they believe caused the kid to freak out. This is especially sad since they're aiming at the wrong target, but the fact remains: this suit has no nobler motivations than vengeance.
Take another look at the game developers that are being sued: Sega and Nintendo. Now, take a look at the games being accused of "influencing" this guy: Doon, Quake, and Mortal Kombat.
What's wrong with this picture? Perhaps these parents should at least be suing the companies that make the games they hate so much?
Actually, if they're suing anyone it should be the parents of the shooter (notice that the parents of the shooter are not involved in this case at all) for doing a damn poor joob of raising a kid who couldn't even distinguish between fantasy and reality enough to refrain from going on a shooting rampage.
I disagree. There is a very clear-cut line between fantasy and reality. I think it's obvious what side of that line video games are. Those who cannot see the line (due to being raised badly, the probably culprit in this particular case, or being just plain wacko for whatever reason) should not be blaming others for acts they committed. It's rather like that one guy who said he went on a killing spree because he'd eaten so many Twinkies that he had gone crazy (this was a looooooooong time ago; you probably will be hard-pressed to fine a Web link to it).
You're a bit mixed up, I'm afraid, over the GIF issue. Unisys was being idiotic over a patent they held on the LZW compression algorithm, which is used in compressing GIF images. They were not being idiotic over a copyright.
Copyrights are Good Things, when used correctly (an example: the GPL). It's patents which are causing all the trouble. Here's why:
Let's say Unisys had copyrights on their code for the LZW compression algorithm. I could write my own code for LZW if I wished, and release it. I have violated no laws by doing so, because copyrights only cover one specific set of code.
However, Unisys has a patent on the underlying algorithm. This means that I cannot write any code for LZW compression at all, because they have patented the idea (which I didn't think was supposed to be legal). Even if every single line of my code is different from the code Unisys uses, I have still violated their patent. Is that right? I don't think so.
The difference between a copyright and a deed is actually critical. Why?
A deed represents something tangible and scarce (that is, not in infinite supply). It does not represent any effort at all. It represents a thing. And this is good; it established the owner of that land.
A copyright represents, essentially, thought. How can someone own a thought? The paper it's printed on, yes. Or perhaps the media. But the thought itself? That cannot be owned. For that matter, it cannot really be given away, for the giver loses nothing in the giving (indeed, it can be said that an idea is worthless unless shared, for only when shared can it be acted upon).
Now, I don't think copyrights are in and of themselves bad things, but they're being horribly misused in the case of software (and don't even get me started on the idea of patents for software). But that's for another debate.
1) We'd all be using X all the time because it's kind of hard to show a parade of advertising pics at the bottom of the console.
2) Instead of a penguin, we'd have that dog from the Taco Bell commercials for a mascot
3) Tonight on Springer: vi/Emacs mixed marriages; can they survive? And a special segment: how to pronounce "Linux."
4) "We're sorry, this program is blacked out in your area" suddenly takes on a whole new meaning.
5) Al Gore would try to take credit over the Net for creating the media.
...anyone got any others? This one just begs for jokes to be made. Honestly, how clueless can this writer be?
I notice people saying how you can't shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater when there is no fire and such things, pointing to those as how free speech could be limited. This is not really true. THere are absolutely no limits of speech in this country, nor should there be. However, if you commit a crime with that speech, the first amendment will not save you The "Fire!" example is a case of disturbing the peace; you have the right to free speech but you do not have the right to commit a crime with that speech. The same goes for selling state secrets. It is not a crime to speak, but it is a crime (not to mention a breach of contract) to tell those things to unauthorized persons.
Can a crime be committed with source code? Possibly. I don't see how, but it's possible. And if such, it could still be prosecuted even if software were protected by the first amendment.
Doesn't matter. It's already been decided by the Supreme Court that expression counts as speech. To give an example: flag-burning. It can be done without speaking a single word, yet the Supreme Court has decided that it is still protected by the First Amendment. Therefore, it doesn't matter if code is speech or expression, it'd still be protected.
Now, here's the argument against it: people claim that source code is a device, not speech. Certainly this is true of compiled code; it does something. But I'd love to see you boot a Linux kernel using only the course, without compiling it first. It does not work. Why? Because source code is nothing more than instructions for the compiler to create the device, not unlike a recipe. Therefore I'd say it's a form of expression, and consequently is protected.
But what do I know; I'm not one of the technologically clueless lawmakers out there today.