Actually there was only 1 "Kimp person". He did it in a day while explaining how easy it is to port software to KDE/QT. It was never distributed and the Gimp people managed to go to war over it before he came back from vacation and said something to the effect of; "I may be legally allowed to do this but if you don't want your software used this way then that's enough for me." Kimp died that day and a few months latter KImageShope was born with the ability to work with Gimp plugins.
BTW : The Kimp thing was with qt-1.xx I.e. before the QPL was even writen.
Another thing to note is that not all modules of KDE is under the GPL.
If the Debian teem was sincere they would agree to include Koffice since there is no GPL code involved at all. Every piece of software in it or required by it is otherwise licensed as seen above.
Read the QPL again. You need to violate the GPL for this restriction to apply or distribute under another free license. I.e. It only applies if the software is distributed without source.
Therefore it's an additional restriction for BSD and X licenses but not for the GPL.
BTW : kdelibs, kdesupport, qt-kde-addon and koffice are under the lgpl, lgpl, qpl and artistic licenses respectively. Why were they not included in Debian ?
With those components you wold have a working office suite and remain Debian pure.
The key thing is to be able to distribute modified versions of the QT library without asking Troll Tech's permission. KDE dose this *already* because a few QT features they like didn't make it into the QT-2.1.0 release.
The Debian problem is a matter of semantics. Parts of KDE are still under the GPL and must remain that way. They include bits and pieces of other GPLed software ( KFloppy comes to mind ). Debian asks the KDE teem to change the license on this software. They can't do that since it belongs to other people who they may not even be able to find.
In all this dispute and haggling the only time I have ever seen someone say "This is *my* GPLed software and I don't want it linked to QT." was with that whole Gime./ Kimp fiasco in 1998. The KDE teem respected that opinion and did not release Kimp at all. Instead they wrote a Gimp compatible Photoshope Clone for KOffice called KImageshope.
Other than that it's just people blabbering at each other about stuff they don't understand. The Debian teem thinks the QPL is not GPL compatible. Other distributions think it is. Having read the GPL and QPL personally ( Most of the people talking here have not ) I realize two things. The GPL doesn't require linking to GPLed software. It simply requires linking to software that allows distribution of modified versions for free ( I.e.. OSS compliant ). That may not have been RMS' intention but it is how the GPL was written and since he had professional Legal help the letter of the GPL stands.
kde-licensing@kde.org is the mailing list where the QPL was debated and refined. This isn't a legal or technical isue. It's a personal problem and the KDE teem canot do anything to apeas the Debian faithfull.
Sure they have some press releases coming out but generally it's just "Ohh we have this cool thing working now. Go buy it". Why can't they be like other companies that announce products 2 or 3 years before the planed ship date?
IBM lately has been delivering on it's promises on time and quickly. So far the only thing wrong in IBM's "Linux Roadmap" is that the Thinkpads haven't had the broad level of Linux support I would like. Sure some models run flawlessly but most of them need a PCMCIA modem and some simply have broken sound or even video in extreme cases.
Apart from that they are doing pretty damned well. Now what are the odds that this box at ship time ( Christmas? ) will have the kind of seamless 100% compatible Linux support people have been screaming for? Sure some of them will ship with Windows but Knowing IBM they might say "If you use our approved Linux distributions your warranty is still valid".
Lots of people don't want games ported to Linux or desktop apps in general. They think it will "dumb down the OS. However there is a purely selfish and logical reason to demand, request and even encourage these things. Here is the chain of reasoning.
1. The biggest problem facing the experienced Linux user is limited choice of hardware. You walk into a shop and of 20 devices for a particular use, anywhere from 5 to 18 don't support Linux.
2. Manufacturers don't bundle Linux drivers or contribute them to the Kernel simply because they don't think there are enough users to make money off.
3. The more applications run on a platform the more users it will attract. There is simply no way the person who bought a computer to play a particular game or run a specific program will use an OS that doesn't support that.
Therefore, by increasing the pool of applications we increase the userbase and by increasing the userbase we increase hardware choice. Already It has got the stage where I have not seen a new SCSI or Network card that doesn't support Linux ( with Linux specific instructions and/or drivers in the box ) for over a year now. Port more games and the same will be true for video cards, sound hardware and controllers.
As for Decent specifically. I didn't play it much before and probably won't start now. However there are people playing the old version on Windows who will at least experiment with the New version under Linux.
It's also very slow. You see on my main desktop ( A humble P200 with 64 megs and a 4 meg S3-Virge ) it takes several minutes to load X. Most of that wait time you have a blank screen.
Sure, X4 doesn't support many chips the X3 supports. However there is no need for it to support them as both versions of X are compatible and Mandrake has already demonstrated how to ship and install both.
With a little refinement they will be able switch X version depending on Video hardware. And of course OSS means that every Linux and *BSD vendor can copy what they do at will.
/* instead of 2 or 3 I prefer the idea of just fully documenting formats and all system calls (all information needed to write code under Windows) */
Sounds nice but won't work. MS claims to document the MSWord format and anyone can download this documentation off the web site. Ask the people working on KWord how useful it is. Hint: They must reverse engineer *.doc files to get working filters.
Running filter code is the best possible documentation. It's also very hard to claim a 100% working filter that can't open any significant % of files.
/* GPL and BSD is to protect open source.. Microsoft dosn't have any intrest in protecting open source... there should be no reason to force that on them. */
The Author is liable for faults in Public domain software. The only real difference between the BSD license and Public domain is that BSD indemnifies the author.
MS and *ALL* it's competitors are careful to not be liable for bugs in the stuff they sell so why should that change now?
They also wouldn't pleas Microsoft and wouldn't satisfy the "hang them high" crowd. Here they are. Very simple and with details that can be worked out latter.
1. Volume Pricing. Simply put they can't sell to the goy buying 1,000,000 units for less than they sell to the goy buying 2,000,000 units.
2. For each program they produce which generates document files or communicates across the network they must produce a simple file viewer or packet catcher ( where appropriate ) that is 100% compatible. No bells or whistles at all required. The catch is that this viewer must be under a BSD license and come with the full source code.
3. At Microsoft's own discretion they can use an IETF owned format instead of following #2 above. When they do it this way the I*ETF must approve the compatibility of each release.
Note that MS may interchange 2 and 3 at it's own discretion but not ignore them both. #1 is not optional however. They would of course need a whole new set of arguments to combat these remedies. After all they have no impact on what MS claims it wants aside from posibly increasing development costs a little.
For the user it would solve all the choice issues in one fell swoop.
PS: Too bad the Judge in this case won't ever here or care about this sort of thing.
Compressed sound and Graphic formats were easier to get entrenched at the times these things came out. The Internet has always had bandwidth limitations and so did the BBSs that built GIF. At the time each one came out there was nothing that came close to offering that kind of value for your baud.
Worse yet each format was "free" for the taking in the beginning. I mean it's ratified by the IEEE so why should I build license fees into my cost? It's a dirty trick like I said and one that can be easily countered ( see comment above ).
It's a well known maneuver and one that standard bodies need to address more aggressively. The trick works like this; You create something cool like a new document format or network protocol. You then apply for a patent on this. Meanwhile you submit it to the IETF, ASCII, IEEE and the rest.
If the concept becomes approved and widely used, even entrenched you then let the other shoe drop and start demanding license fees from everybody. MP3 and GIF are the most notorious examples of this gambit.
The solution is for all standards bodies to require a signed declaration stating "This isn't patented and any patent we have to cover it is invalid". At least one body dose this already ( May be the IETF but I am not sure ). The rest should fall strictly into line.
Force industry to try and push new stuff without calling them "standard" or choose to give up royalties.
Sure it has a different storyline and you are fighting different creatures but the fact is the actual game play isn't much different.
One thing I really miss in DOOM was the sophisticated pozle aspects. You could get all the weapons and make yourself invulnerable with the "secret" codes but it would still be difficult to get all the keys and find the exit.
Appart from that it's just shoot everything that moves or refuses to move and Never mind if you suffer motion sickness, get dizzy or loose your lunch ( And it's not splattering body parts which cause the latter ).
One thing we really need in Doom 3 is something bigger than the BFG9000. I haven't figured out what it should be yet but it could maybe blow holes in walls the way real industrial strength weapons do.
Also, how about making you go slower if your health decreases and blurring your vision when it gets really low?
One thing I like about this dude though. He is strong. Imagine the weight of a Rocket Launcher, a chain saw and 5 other guns. Including 2 pump action rifles and a full machine gun with rotating barrels. This goy runs around carrying all of them with ammunition to match even when he is seriously wounded.
Just a hint for you. Lots of people use SaMBa on a 6 client workgrope LAN.
There are ways around these performance issues. I admin a huge mixed network sometimes. Like I said the problems are way below the interface.
Tell me about the security issues. I don't see how not telling users what is shared where will save you from anything. If a user is too clueless to use a particular resource properly he should be denied permission. If he is willing and able to abuse the system deliberately then not telling him what is out there will stall him for maybe 5 seconds.
To clarify #5. I was talking about changing desktop size and not just display size. ctrl alt - is only usefully when I go to a site which forces a very small font size ( I run 1024X768 on a 15" monitor ). What happens when I want to use a 640X480 or 800X600 app via VNC? ( Some useful apps have a hard coded window size that's relay convenient if it fills the desktop ) I then have to be careful just to keep the cursor within the window.
"Beet the Tar out of CDE" was my personal subjective testament on the quality of each desktop environment. The existence of large piles of applications just says CDE has been around longer not that it's better. I used CDE and *I* did not *like* the interface.
Bringing Motif to Linux for $0 will defiantly help motif apps to come to this platform. What I expect to see and you can quote me on this is that most of those apps will be run on a KDE or Gnome Desktop and simply make use of Dynamically loaded Motif libs. These days we use Netscape that way but with static libs.
/* These are probably incompatible. Network Neighborhood is IMHO one of the top 3 things wrong with Windows. */
How so? Exactly what is wrong with a system that will show NFS and SMB shares in your local network requiring '0' effort from the user?
All the problems I have encountered while using Network neighborhood are actually in the underlying protocols and the general buginess of the OS. The idea of browsing computers and shared resources on a lan just like browsing directories and files on a local file system felt natural the 1st time I saw it and still dose.
KDE-2.0 in BETA and Gnome 1.2 on it's way out soon. XF86-4.0 is out and the new Kernel has gone into the "Linus vacation stage". We should be seeing serious Linux desktop movements this christmas.
Never mind Wine heading to 1.0 ( eventually ). The big question isn't even "will you be using KDE or Gnome?". Most of us have already made that decision. The mystery is "what will the new users coming to Linux use?" RedHat and Debian don't install KDE as the default. All the other desktop wanabees do. RedHat is very strong with new users. Most people here of them as the #1 Linux.
What this split means is that for the next year or two ( at least ) KDE and Gnome will be pushing the technology and the usability as much as possible. This ongoing conflict continues to attract young developers with nifty apps. It's this competing against each other that let them beet the tar out of CDE ( At least the Sun and SCO implementations I have used ) and draw close to Mac and Win98 in some respects and even pass them in others.
Here is my top 5 list of neto things to add before releasing either of these desktops in the next version.
1. "Network Neighborhood" : It should feel like the MS version too.
2. "Drag to resize" : This on Taskbars.
3. "Stability, Stability and Stability" : So these people have a reputation to work on.
4. "File Format compatibility" : Frankly. I would want Koffice and Goffice apps to use the same file formats. It's bad enough when you need to keep tweaking a semi broken filter for MS bloatware but why shouldn't KO and GO use the exact same blend of XML and compression.
5. "On the fly resolution switching" : Yes this is really something XF86 doesn't do but I still want to gripe about it. ctrl alt - dose part of it. not all.
Laughing all the way to the bank
on
Inside Transmeta
·
· Score: 3
Venture Capitalists who put money into Transmeta are liking there chops already. It's going to take some major goofups for this baby to do anything but rake in vast piles of money.
Sure it's not the fastest chip out there but it is fast enough for most things. iNTEL will over the next few months have to market it's laptop chips as a way to play Quake on the road. There is a good chance that they will make an offer on Transmeta. There is also a good chance that Transmeta will say no.
Why no ? Because after reading up on how these chips work I have come to realize that this "It's a low power chip for portables" argument is just to get a leg in the door. The way Code Morphing works suggests that it will be possible to gang several chips together and have them perform like a single, very fast CPU. All it takes is modifications to the code morphing software.
Do SMP at that level then again at the OS level and you will have 16 and 32 way machines that scale like 2 way or 4 way boxes even under Linux 2.0 or Windows NT 4.
When ( not if ) Transmeta moves into the high end they will dominate it for a few years just as they will gradually come to dominate the portable market.
What Open Source IDE's, Office Suites and other such things really need are Templets. And yes a proper GUI IDE has more in common with an Office suite than it dose with a Compiler + Editor + Debugger. Both in terms of functionality, design and target user.
What do I mean by Templets ? A typical commercial Office suite comes with literally hundreds of half finished documents and a Typical Commercial IDE has a pile of half finished programs.
Just start up the app, respond to a few questions for general things and you have a working app that may do part or even all of what you want ( if you have simple needs ). A really cool interface is nice and good online docs are extremely helpful but the REAL killer feature is the document files included in the distribution.
What I suggest is that the OSS IDEs designed for beginners ( This, GIDE and KDEvelop come to mind ) should have a well documented and simple method for creating wizards and templets. Then novices should be invited to work on these with the core developers only providing QA and guidance ( You don't want the IRC wizard to generate a client that must be setuid=root do you ?:)
Same goes for the Office suites, except that we should bundle a ton of clipart. Sure it means that latter on when you install Mandrake or Debian ( Both already 2 CDs each ) you have a 3rd CD called "templets and clipart" with nothing but royalty free graphics and sound plus BSD licensed sample source code. The apps will then know how to find it ( don't hardcode/mnt/cdrom either:).
BTW : Did anyone else notice that what separates the downloadeble WordPerfect 8 for Linux and the WP8 Office for Windows ( Motherboard driver disk version ) from the Shrink-wrapped full price versions is just the printed manuals, Templets, clipart and founts ?
PS : It's not widely known but Nazis also killed all the Black people they found in Germany. It's only luck that there were not 6 million of them to make it a holocaust.
No, it's probably more widely known than you think. Hitler also went after Catholics, union members, communists, gypsies, homosexuals, slavic people, retarded people and of course jews, among others. It's pretty safe to say that he wasn't a very nice guy in general. Can you say "straw man?" I thought so.
That was the point. It was only a Jewish Holocaust because the Nazis found more Jews. If any of the other groups were a large portion of the areas Germany conquered then it would be there Holocaust instead.
Nazis really just hated everybody. In the End they even hated themselves ( It's alleged that Hitler killed himself )
Challenging some of my major points with links to back it up. This is why I like Slashdot. This is why I keep coming back.:)
I live near an old Limestone Quarry so I am well aware of it's "durability" or lack thereof. I thought the Sphinx was made of sterner stuff, namely Granite.
BTW : Hate crimes are and remain a minority of offenses. 1 in 1000 is a good figure. It means you yanks are starting to grow up. Yes, I know that when a Black man goes out to shoot some white people that can be hate crime too. This is one of the reasons I don't like the US so much. There is a lot of hate and anger of citizen against citizen just below the surface and much of it is racial.
Racial doesn't just mean black and white either. All the other races and nationalities get into the act. This makes New York ( A real melting pot of humanity if ever there was one ) an uncomfortable place to live and it just lights up your day when somebody goes out of his way to be nice.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually there was only 1 "Kimp person". He did it in a day while explaining how easy it is to port software to KDE/QT. It was never distributed and the Gimp people managed to go to war over it before he came back from vacation and said something to the effect of; "I may be legally allowed to do this but if you don't want your software used this way then that's enough for me." Kimp died that day and a few months latter KImageShope was born with the ability to work with Gimp plugins.
BTW : The Kimp thing was with qt-1.xx I.e. before the QPL was even writen.
Another thing to note is that not all modules of KDE is under the GPL.
kde-qt-addon == qpl
kdesupport == lgpl, bsd
kdelibs == lgpl, bsd, qpl
koffice == artistic
If the Debian teem was sincere they would agree to include Koffice since there is no GPL code involved at all. Every piece of software in it or required by it is otherwise licensed as seen above.
Read the QPL again. You need to violate the GPL for this restriction to apply or distribute under another free license. I.e. It only applies if the software is distributed without source.
Therefore it's an additional restriction for BSD and X licenses but not for the GPL.
BTW : kdelibs, kdesupport, qt-kde-addon and koffice are under the lgpl, lgpl, qpl and artistic licenses respectively. Why were they not included in Debian ?
With those components you wold have a working office suite and remain Debian pure.
The key thing is to be able to distribute modified versions of the QT library without asking Troll Tech's permission. KDE dose this *already* because a few QT features they like didn't make it into the QT-2.1.0 release.
./ Kimp fiasco in 1998. The KDE teem respected that opinion and did not release Kimp at all. Instead they wrote a Gimp compatible Photoshope Clone for KOffice called KImageshope.
The Debian problem is a matter of semantics. Parts of KDE are still under the GPL and must remain that way. They include bits and pieces of other GPLed software ( KFloppy comes to mind ). Debian asks the KDE teem to change the license on this software. They can't do that since it belongs to other people who they may not even be able to find.
In all this dispute and haggling the only time I have ever seen someone say "This is *my* GPLed software and I don't want it linked to QT." was with that whole Gime
Other than that it's just people blabbering at each other about stuff they don't understand. The Debian teem thinks the QPL is not GPL compatible. Other distributions think it is. Having read the GPL and QPL personally ( Most of the people talking here have not ) I realize two things. The GPL doesn't require linking to GPLed software. It simply requires linking to software that allows distribution of modified versions for free ( I.e.. OSS compliant ). That may not have been RMS' intention but it is how the GPL was written and since he had professional Legal help the letter of the GPL stands.
kde-licensing@kde.org is the mailing list where the QPL was debated and refined. This isn't a legal or technical isue. It's a personal problem and the KDE teem canot do anything to apeas the Debian faithfull.
What on earth is wrong with IBM ?
Sure they have some press releases coming out but generally it's just "Ohh we have this cool thing working now. Go buy it". Why can't they be like other companies that announce products 2 or 3 years before the planed ship date?
IBM lately has been delivering on it's promises on time and quickly. So far the only thing wrong in IBM's "Linux Roadmap" is that the Thinkpads haven't had the broad level of Linux support I would like. Sure some models run flawlessly but most of them need a PCMCIA modem and some simply have broken sound or even video in extreme cases.
Apart from that they are doing pretty damned well. Now what are the odds that this box at ship time ( Christmas? ) will have the kind of seamless 100% compatible Linux support people have been screaming for? Sure some of them will ship with Windows but Knowing IBM they might say "If you use our approved Linux distributions your warranty is still valid".
PS : The headline is the title of a song.
Lots of people don't want games ported to Linux or desktop apps in general. They think it will "dumb down the OS. However there is a purely selfish and logical reason to demand, request and even encourage these things. Here is the chain of reasoning.
1. The biggest problem facing the experienced Linux user is limited choice of hardware. You walk into a shop and of 20 devices for a particular use, anywhere from 5 to 18 don't support Linux.
2. Manufacturers don't bundle Linux drivers or contribute them to the Kernel simply because they don't think there are enough users to make money off.
3. The more applications run on a platform the more users it will attract. There is simply no way the person who bought a computer to play a particular game or run a specific program will use an OS that doesn't support that.
Therefore, by increasing the pool of applications we increase the userbase and by increasing the userbase we increase hardware choice. Already It has got the stage where I have not seen a new SCSI or Network card that doesn't support Linux ( with Linux specific instructions and/or drivers in the box ) for over a year now. Port more games and the same will be true for video cards, sound hardware and controllers.
As for Decent specifically. I didn't play it much before and probably won't start now. However there are people playing the old version on Windows who will at least experiment with the New version under Linux.
What's your E-Mail address ?
I suspect as much. I wold like to know what can be done about this.
Irideum has already put in place a procedure for crashing and burning the entire fleat of Satalites shuld they not recive funding to keap them up.
Imagine a Mining company that as it's last gesture before going bancrupt initiates an environmental restoration.
This is responsible behavior and despite all the other things wrong with Iridium, this makes me simpathetic. All the best to them.
It's also very slow. You see on my main desktop ( A humble P200 with 64 megs and a 4 meg S3-Virge ) it takes several minutes to load X. Most of that wait time you have a blank screen.
Sure, X4 doesn't support many chips the X3 supports. However there is no need for it to support them as both versions of X are compatible and Mandrake has already demonstrated how to ship and install both.
With a little refinement they will be able switch X version depending on Video hardware. And of course OSS means that every Linux and *BSD vendor can copy what they do at will.
/*
On cause 2, its easy to obsficate source code, and I believe that they already have a automated system for doing it.
*/
It's harder to do this than to simply falsify documentation.
/*
instead of 2 or 3 I prefer the idea of just fully documenting formats and all system calls (all information needed to write code under Windows)
*/
Sounds nice but won't work. MS claims to document the MSWord format and anyone can download this documentation off the web site. Ask the people working on KWord how useful it is. Hint: They must reverse engineer *.doc files to get working filters.
Running filter code is the best possible documentation. It's also very hard to claim a 100% working filter that can't open any significant % of files.
/*
GPL and BSD is to protect open source.. Microsoft dosn't have any intrest in protecting open source... there should be no reason to force that on them.
*/
The Author is liable for faults in Public domain software. The only real difference between the BSD license and Public domain is that BSD indemnifies the author.
MS and *ALL* it's competitors are careful to not be liable for bugs in the stuff they sell so why should that change now?
They also wouldn't pleas Microsoft and wouldn't satisfy the "hang them high" crowd. Here they are. Very simple and with details that can be worked out latter.
1. Volume Pricing. Simply put they can't sell to the goy buying 1,000,000 units for less than they sell to the goy buying 2,000,000 units.
2. For each program they produce which generates document files or communicates across the network they must produce a simple file viewer or packet catcher ( where appropriate ) that is 100% compatible. No bells or whistles at all required. The catch is that this viewer must be under a BSD license and come with the full source code.
3. At Microsoft's own discretion they can use an IETF owned format instead of following #2 above. When they do it this way the I*ETF must approve the compatibility of each release.
Note that MS may interchange 2 and 3 at it's own discretion but not ignore them both. #1 is not optional however. They would of course need a whole new set of arguments to combat these remedies. After all they have no impact on what MS claims it wants aside from posibly increasing development costs a little.
For the user it would solve all the choice issues in one fell swoop.
PS: Too bad the Judge in this case won't ever here or care about this sort of thing.
Compressed sound and Graphic formats were easier to get entrenched at the times these things came out. The Internet has always had bandwidth limitations and so did the BBSs that built GIF. At the time each one came out there was nothing that came close to offering that kind of value for your baud.
Worse yet each format was "free" for the taking in the beginning. I mean it's ratified by the IEEE so why should I build license fees into my cost? It's a dirty trick like I said and one that can be easily countered ( see comment above ).
It's a well known maneuver and one that standard bodies need to address more aggressively. The trick works like this; You create something cool like a new document format or network protocol. You then apply for a patent on this. Meanwhile you submit it to the IETF, ASCII, IEEE and the rest.
If the concept becomes approved and widely used, even entrenched you then let the other shoe drop and start demanding license fees from everybody. MP3 and GIF are the most notorious examples of this gambit.
The solution is for all standards bodies to require a signed declaration stating "This isn't patented and any patent we have to cover it is invalid". At least one body dose this already ( May be the IETF but I am not sure ). The rest should fall strictly into line.
Force industry to try and push new stuff without calling them "standard" or choose to give up royalties.
Straight Face? do you see any such thing here ?
I must be delusional but isn't Quake 1, DOOM 3 ?
Sure it has a different storyline and you are fighting different creatures but the fact is the actual game play isn't much different.
One thing I really miss in DOOM was the sophisticated pozle aspects. You could get all the weapons and make yourself invulnerable with the "secret" codes but it would still be difficult to get all the keys and find the exit.
Appart from that it's just shoot everything that moves or refuses to move and Never mind if you suffer motion sickness, get dizzy or loose your lunch ( And it's not splattering body parts which cause the latter ).
One thing we really need in Doom 3 is something bigger than the BFG9000. I haven't figured out what it should be yet but it could maybe blow holes in walls the way real industrial strength weapons do.
Also, how about making you go slower if your health decreases and blurring your vision when it gets really low?
One thing I like about this dude though. He is strong. Imagine the weight of a Rocket Launcher, a chain saw and 5 other guns. Including 2 pump action rifles and a full machine gun with rotating barrels. This goy runs around carrying all of them with ammunition to match even when he is seriously wounded.
Talk about strong.
Just a hint for you. Lots of people use SaMBa on a 6 client workgrope LAN.
There are ways around these performance issues. I admin a huge mixed network sometimes. Like I said the problems are way below the interface.
Tell me about the security issues. I don't see how not telling users what is shared where will save you from anything. If a user is too clueless to use a particular resource properly he should be denied permission. If he is willing and able to abuse the system deliberately then not telling him what is out there will stall him for maybe 5 seconds.
To clarify #5. I was talking about changing desktop size and not just display size. ctrl alt - is only usefully when I go to a site which forces a very small font size ( I run 1024X768 on a 15" monitor ). What happens when I want to use a 640X480 or 800X600 app via VNC? ( Some useful apps have a hard coded window size that's relay convenient if it fills the desktop ) I then have to be careful just to keep the cursor within the window.
"Beet the Tar out of CDE" was my personal subjective testament on the quality of each desktop environment. The existence of large piles of applications just says CDE has been around longer not that it's better. I used CDE and *I* did not *like* the interface.
Bringing Motif to Linux for $0 will defiantly help motif apps to come to this platform. What I expect to see and you can quote me on this is that most of those apps will be run on a KDE or Gnome Desktop and simply make use of Dynamically loaded Motif libs. These days we use Netscape that way but with static libs.
1 & 3
/*
These are probably incompatible. Network Neighborhood is IMHO one of the top 3 things wrong with Windows.
*/
How so? Exactly what is wrong with a system that will show NFS and SMB shares in your local network requiring '0' effort from the user?
All the problems I have encountered while using Network neighborhood are actually in the underlying protocols and the general buginess of the OS. The idea of browsing computers and shared resources on a lan just like browsing directories and files on a local file system felt natural the 1st time I saw it and still dose.
KDE-2.0 in BETA and Gnome 1.2 on it's way out soon. XF86-4.0 is out and the new Kernel has gone into the "Linus vacation stage". We should be seeing serious Linux desktop movements this christmas.
Never mind Wine heading to 1.0 ( eventually ). The big question isn't even "will you be using KDE or Gnome?". Most of us have already made that decision. The mystery is "what will the new users coming to Linux use?" RedHat and Debian don't install KDE as the default. All the other desktop wanabees do. RedHat is very strong with new users. Most people here of them as the #1 Linux.
What this split means is that for the next year or two ( at least ) KDE and Gnome will be pushing the technology and the usability as much as possible. This ongoing conflict continues to attract young developers with nifty apps. It's this competing against each other that let them beet the tar out of CDE ( At least the Sun and SCO implementations I have used ) and draw close to Mac and Win98 in some respects and even pass them in others.
Here is my top 5 list of neto things to add before releasing either of these desktops in the next version.
1. "Network Neighborhood" : It should feel like the MS version too.
2. "Drag to resize" : This on Taskbars.
3. "Stability, Stability and Stability" : So these people have a reputation to work on.
4. "File Format compatibility" : Frankly. I would want Koffice and Goffice apps to use the same file formats. It's bad enough when you need to keep tweaking a semi broken filter for MS bloatware but why shouldn't KO and GO use the exact same blend of XML and compression.
5. "On the fly resolution switching" : Yes this is really something XF86 doesn't do but I still want to gripe about it. ctrl alt - dose part of it. not all.
Venture Capitalists who put money into Transmeta are liking there chops already. It's going to take some major goofups for this baby to do anything but rake in vast piles of money.
Sure it's not the fastest chip out there but it is fast enough for most things. iNTEL will over the next few months have to market it's laptop chips as a way to play Quake on the road. There is a good chance that they will make an offer on Transmeta. There is also a good chance that Transmeta will say no.
Why no ? Because after reading up on how these chips work I have come to realize that this "It's a low power chip for portables" argument is just to get a leg in the door. The way Code Morphing works suggests that it will be possible to gang several chips together and have them perform like a single, very fast CPU. All it takes is modifications to the code morphing software.
Do SMP at that level then again at the OS level and you will have 16 and 32 way machines that scale like 2 way or 4 way boxes even under Linux 2.0 or Windows NT 4.
When ( not if ) Transmeta moves into the high end they will dominate it for a few years just as they will gradually come to dominate the portable market.
What Open Source IDE's, Office Suites and other such things really need are Templets. And yes a proper GUI IDE has more in common with an Office suite than it dose with a Compiler + Editor + Debugger. Both in terms of functionality, design and target user.
:)
/mnt/cdrom either :).
What do I mean by Templets ? A typical commercial Office suite comes with literally hundreds of half finished documents and a Typical Commercial IDE has a pile of half finished programs.
Just start up the app, respond to a few questions for general things and you have a working app that may do part or even all of what you want ( if you have simple needs ). A really cool interface is nice and good online docs are extremely helpful but the REAL killer feature is the document files included in the distribution.
What I suggest is that the OSS IDEs designed for beginners ( This, GIDE and KDEvelop come to mind ) should have a well documented and simple method for creating wizards and templets. Then novices should be invited to work on these with the core developers only providing QA and guidance ( You don't want the IRC wizard to generate a client that must be setuid=root do you ?
Same goes for the Office suites, except that we should bundle a ton of clipart. Sure it means that latter on when you install Mandrake or Debian ( Both already 2 CDs each ) you have a 3rd CD called "templets and clipart" with nothing but royalty free graphics and sound plus BSD licensed sample source code. The apps will then know how to find it ( don't hardcode
BTW : Did anyone else notice that what separates the downloadeble WordPerfect 8 for Linux and the WP8 Office for Windows ( Motherboard driver disk version ) from the Shrink-wrapped full price versions is just the printed manuals, Templets, clipart and founts ?
No, it's probably more widely known than you think. Hitler also went after Catholics, union members, communists, gypsies, homosexuals, slavic people, retarded people and of course jews, among others. It's pretty safe to say that he wasn't a very nice guy in general. Can you say "straw man?" I thought so.
That was the point. It was only a Jewish Holocaust because the Nazis found more Jews. If any of the other groups were a large portion of the areas Germany conquered then it would be there Holocaust instead.
Nazis really just hated everybody. In the End they even hated themselves ( It's alleged that Hitler killed himself )
Challenging some of my major points with links to back it up. This is why I like Slashdot. This is why I keep coming back. :)
I live near an old Limestone Quarry so I am well aware of it's "durability" or lack thereof. I thought the Sphinx was made of sterner stuff, namely Granite.
BTW : Hate crimes are and remain a minority of offenses. 1 in 1000 is a good figure. It means you yanks are starting to grow up. Yes, I know that when a Black man goes out to shoot some white people that can be hate crime too. This is one of the reasons I don't like the US so much. There is a lot of hate and anger of citizen against citizen just below the surface and much of it is racial.
Racial doesn't just mean black and white either. All the other races and nationalities get into the act. This makes New York ( A real melting pot of humanity if ever there was one ) an uncomfortable place to live and it just lights up your day when somebody goes out of his way to be nice.