It's my understanding that many of the people who use Linux don't have an agenda to convert the masses to using Linux.
They use it because they like it. And they add to it if they can (either through applications or through the kernel itself) because they have an itch to scratch. And they support other applications because those applications scratch their itches.
I guess it comes down to some people saying, "Linux isn't becoming mainstream and simple enough for everyone to use!" And the reply from many will be, "So?"
Isn't this really just a standards specification for the office file format in XML and thus has nothing to do with open source since Microsoft is not providing any code ?
And wouldn't open source advocates raise a lot of hell if they didn't release this specification? So pedantic nitpicking over whether this is technically "open source" per se seems kind of irrelevant. They're opening to us the source specification from which they are creating Office documents in XML.
And I'm not trying to be an arse here. It's a step forward at the very least.
Apparantly you can link directly to a Google Base hosted image. This means basically free image hosting with virtually unlimited bandwidth. I wonder how long it will be until Google clamps down on this, if at all.
Frankly, I'm more interested in when the API's come out for this thing. The kind of apps people will build that take advantage of this will be quite interesting. Hmm... Things might get pretty interesting pretty fast once the API's are out.
What if Bill Gates had offered a free license of Windows for this project? I read some people in the comments miffed that the project didn't take up Jobs' offer. But seriously, think about it. If you replaced OSX and Jobs with Windows and Gates in this scenario, those same people commenting would have been shouting to high heaven if the project took Gates up on the offer. In terms of the goals of the project, though, it's the same thing if Gates or Jobs offers Windows or OSX to use as the operating system.
I say kudos to the project for sticking to their guns and their principles. Keeping your integrity can mean tough choices sometimes, but it's always better in the long run.
Greg's Head is part of my daily reading and he always has interesting things to say about the field of user interfaces. His latest post is Linux Thoughts. While the post has some very shrewd observations, there was something that nagged at me while I read it.
Going back through the post, I think his basic premise is wrong. The first paragraph of the post opens with,
For years the open-source Linux community has been competing with Microsoft to become the dominant desktop operating system.
And I think that's where he's wrong. I think there are definitely players in the Linux arena who want to use Linux to compete with Microsoft, but I don't think that's true for Linux as a whole. The drive behind Linux isn't to compete with Microsoft, to replace Windows, or even to provide a mom-and-pop OS to the mainstream. As with almost all open source software, the drive behind Linux is the scratching of an itch. No more, no less.
Looking from that point of view greatly changes some of the things Greg had to say. For instance,
Right now there are dozens and perhaps even hundreds of different Linux distributions. Each one has its own quirks, bugs and issues. Linux is currently an idea it's not a brand. There doesn't seem to be a central floodgate to dictate the standard interface. Each distribution creates its own icons, interface elements, configurations and sometimes even their own shell. To gain momentum some level of standardization is necessary to be called "Linux."
If Linux was trying to be a brand, this would hold very true. However, from the standpoint that Linux progress comes from people scratching an itch, it doesn't hold any water. Part of why Linux is where it is today is because there are "dozens and perhaps even hundreds of different Linux distributions."
If you are trying to understand how Microsoft could compete against Linux, it becomes easier if you take the viewpoint that Linux is trying to be a brand that is competing back against Microsoft. But I believe you would be fooling yourself to take that viewpoint. The simple fact that it's not trying to be a brand is why it's so hard to compete against Linux.
As I said before, there are players in the Linux arena who would like to use Linux to compete against Microsoft, and the most obvious player that comes to mind is Novell. With Linux as a whole, though, there's nothing really for Microsoft to compete against. Microsoft could crush SuSe into the dust and it wouldn't really affect Linux.
Keeping all that in mind, I want to stress that this does not invalidate anything Greg has said about Linux in his post. He brings up some excellent points, lays some very good directions for Linux developers to take, and really hits the nail on the head with a lot of things with regard to how Linux could expand to the masses. But...
As long as there are a handful of programmers who are happy with their Linux distribution and are continuing to tinker with it, Linux will be wildly successful. Why? Because that handful of programmers are scratching an itch. It's as simple as that.
I just had to solve this exact problem. I had to record a potentially 3-hour commencement and did not want to rely on 1-hour DV tapes. I researched what it would take to get my laptop to be the video capture device. I wrote up my result in my Backpack.
I think one of the underlying reasons for this is Google. It's not explicitly stated that this is the reason, but that's what I read between the lines when reading the FAQ about the reorganization. After reading Mitchell Baker's blog, I'm almost certain of it (though he doesn't explicitly state it either).
I think we will be seeing some more serious collaboration between Mozilla and Google now.
The letter starts off making some good points and pointed analogies. But, but the end it just sounds ridiculous. I mean, read this snippet from the end...
"Math SAT scores have never been higher; verbal scores have been climbing steadily for the last five years; nearly every indicator in the Department of Education study known as the Nation's Report Card is higher now than when the study was implemented in 1971.
"By almost every measure, the kids are all right."
Is he joking? I mean, does he seriously believe what he wrote there? For one thing, if scores have gone up at all it's because the standard has been lowered over the years. For another, kids in the US, as a whole, are far from "all right" these days. If you don't see that, you're not taking an honest look at the state of today's younger generation.
Uh huh. So a huge list is compiled of all the underage kids. Yeesh. I'm sure the spammers will love that list. I can't even fathom the sheer volume of spam they will get once they aren't underage anymore.
It's already open source. Suggesting to GPL it is just being zealot.
I'm not a zealot. I'm just uninformed. I went and read a bit of the Mozilla and Netscape Public Licenses and it appears you could very easily fork the Firefox project.
So my basic point still stands. If development really does stall, it looks like it would be pretty easy for a group of new developers to fork the project and continue the development of Firefox under a new name. (Yes, yes, I know there are amazing problems in getting people to adopt. But it would happen, maybe slowly at first, but it would happen.)
The source code is out there. If development completely stalls on this project, maybe they should just GPL the thing and let some other group of developers take over. I'm sure there are holes in this suggestion, but it seems a sensible thing to if things really grind to a halt.
PopCap Games almost exclusively develops these types of games. While Bejewled can suck you in for hours at a time, it's a game you can play in five to ten minutes and still have fun at it.
Just think what would happen if that $10 billion went towards a couple of public school systems.
Absolutely nothing. We've been throwing billions at the public school systems for years and we've got very little to show for it. In fact, things have gotten worse.
In IE, there are options to turn off "friendly" error messages and let the server (not IE) serve you its own error page. It doesn't stop the server from making a "pretty" error page for you, but at least it will stop IE from giving you a generic "friendly" error message.
Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced -> Browsing -> Uncheck the "Show Friendly..." boxes
The article's basic assumption is that Internet-related work is the defining factor in what OS I choose. Adobe hasn't released a Linux version of Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign. Many other apps I use on a daily basis are either just not released for Linux, or are at the status of someone's pet project on SourceForge. This is not to knock the wide array of software that is available for Linux, but the software needed for me to do all my daily work is not quite there yet.
In the meantime, I use Firefox for Windows which is nicely patched (and quite quickly patched at that).
Can't this simply be corrected via software? Just decay the other colors as well to keep the color calibration the same.
True, you could constantly re-calibrate with software, but that's a big pain to have to do repeatedly. And regardless, the fact would remain that the overall lifetime of the monitor is still relatively short compared to LCD's.
Don't get the idea that I'm knocking this technology, though. It's still pretty amazing stuff.
Nice as it would be to have one of these, it will be a few years before they are worth buying. One major drawback is that the green component of these screens have a shorter lifetime than the red and blue, not to mention an overall shorter lifetime than LCD's. The early LCD's were not so bad, even with a shorter lifetime, because all three colors decayed at relatively the same rate. With OLED's having a shorter lifetime for green, the color drift will be much more dramatic.
But what about the other direction? One guy found out he was getting scammed by a buyer and so instead of selling him a Powerbook, he sold him a P-P-P-Powerbook.:) Gotta love it.
I don't know all the ins and outs, but it seems to be that many people have been burned by the DMCA for trying to let others know about their security problems. I can't remember how many stories on Slashdot I've read that seemed utterly ridiculous because someone was in legal hot water for trying to help some company/institution/organization get their security issues known about.
Slashdot Mirror
How many times are we going to see this posted? This is getting ridiculous. It was neat the first time. Now it's getting old.
Star Control II
It's my understanding that many of the people who use Linux don't have an agenda to convert the masses to using Linux.
They use it because they like it. And they add to it if they can (either through applications or through the kernel itself) because they have an itch to scratch. And they support other applications because those applications scratch their itches.
I guess it comes down to some people saying, "Linux isn't becoming mainstream and simple enough for everyone to use!" And the reply from many will be, "So?"
Isn't this really just a standards specification for the office file format in XML and thus has nothing to do with open source since Microsoft is not providing any code ?
And wouldn't open source advocates raise a lot of hell if they didn't release this specification? So pedantic nitpicking over whether this is technically "open source" per se seems kind of irrelevant. They're opening to us the source specification from which they are creating Office documents in XML.
And I'm not trying to be an arse here. It's a step forward at the very least.
Apparantly you can link directly to a Google Base hosted image. This means basically free image hosting with virtually unlimited bandwidth. I wonder how long it will be until Google clamps down on this, if at all.
Here's an example.
Frankly, I'm more interested in when the API's come out for this thing. The kind of apps people will build that take advantage of this will be quite interesting. Hmm... Things might get pretty interesting pretty fast once the API's are out.
What if Bill Gates had offered a free license of Windows for this project? I read some people in the comments miffed that the project didn't take up Jobs' offer. But seriously, think about it. If you replaced OSX and Jobs with Windows and Gates in this scenario, those same people commenting would have been shouting to high heaven if the project took Gates up on the offer. In terms of the goals of the project, though, it's the same thing if Gates or Jobs offers Windows or OSX to use as the operating system.
I say kudos to the project for sticking to their guns and their principles. Keeping your integrity can mean tough choices sometimes, but it's always better in the long run.
Greg's Head is part of my daily reading and he always has interesting things to say about the field of user interfaces. His latest post is Linux Thoughts. While the post has some very shrewd observations, there was something that nagged at me while I read it.
Going back through the post, I think his basic premise is wrong. The first paragraph of the post opens with,
And I think that's where he's wrong. I think there are definitely players in the Linux arena who want to use Linux to compete with Microsoft, but I don't think that's true for Linux as a whole. The drive behind Linux isn't to compete with Microsoft, to replace Windows, or even to provide a mom-and-pop OS to the mainstream. As with almost all open source software, the drive behind Linux is the scratching of an itch. No more, no less.
Looking from that point of view greatly changes some of the things Greg had to say. For instance,
If Linux was trying to be a brand, this would hold very true. However, from the standpoint that Linux progress comes from people scratching an itch, it doesn't hold any water. Part of why Linux is where it is today is because there are "dozens and perhaps even hundreds of different Linux distributions."
If you are trying to understand how Microsoft could compete against Linux, it becomes easier if you take the viewpoint that Linux is trying to be a brand that is competing back against Microsoft. But I believe you would be fooling yourself to take that viewpoint. The simple fact that it's not trying to be a brand is why it's so hard to compete against Linux.
As I said before, there are players in the Linux arena who would like to use Linux to compete against Microsoft, and the most obvious player that comes to mind is Novell. With Linux as a whole, though, there's nothing really for Microsoft to compete against. Microsoft could crush SuSe into the dust and it wouldn't really affect Linux.
Keeping all that in mind, I want to stress that this does not invalidate anything Greg has said about Linux in his post. He brings up some excellent points, lays some very good directions for Linux developers to take, and really hits the nail on the head with a lot of things with regard to how Linux could expand to the masses. But...
As long as there are a handful of programmers who are happy with their Linux distribution and are continuing to tinker with it, Linux will be wildly successful. Why? Because that handful of programmers are scratching an itch. It's as simple as that.
Sorry about that... the URL for the shared version of that page should be:
http://mboffin.backpackit.com/pub/66066
I just had to solve this exact problem. I had to record a potentially 3-hour commencement and did not want to rely on 1-hour DV tapes. I researched what it would take to get my laptop to be the video capture device. I wrote up my result in my Backpack.
Direct to Disk Video Recording
I hope you can find it useful.
I think one of the underlying reasons for this is Google. It's not explicitly stated that this is the reason, but that's what I read between the lines when reading the FAQ about the reorganization. After reading Mitchell Baker's blog, I'm almost certain of it (though he doesn't explicitly state it either).
I think we will be seeing some more serious collaboration between Mozilla and Google now.
The letter starts off making some good points and pointed analogies. But, but the end it just sounds ridiculous. I mean, read this snippet from the end...
"Math SAT scores have never been higher; verbal scores have been climbing steadily for the last five years; nearly every indicator in the Department of Education study known as the Nation's Report Card is higher now than when the study was implemented in 1971.
"By almost every measure, the kids are all right."
Is he joking? I mean, does he seriously believe what he wrote there? For one thing, if scores have gone up at all it's because the standard has been lowered over the years. For another, kids in the US, as a whole, are far from "all right" these days. If you don't see that, you're not taking an honest look at the state of today's younger generation.
This was classified? All the information in this document has been freely available on the Web for quite some time now...
UNclassified. Not DEclassified. Adjective, not verb.
Uh huh. So a huge list is compiled of all the underage kids. Yeesh. I'm sure the spammers will love that list. I can't even fathom the sheer volume of spam they will get once they aren't underage anymore.
It's already open source. Suggesting to GPL it is just being zealot.
I'm not a zealot. I'm just uninformed. I went and read a bit of the Mozilla and Netscape Public Licenses and it appears you could very easily fork the Firefox project. So my basic point still stands. If development really does stall, it looks like it would be pretty easy for a group of new developers to fork the project and continue the development of Firefox under a new name. (Yes, yes, I know there are amazing problems in getting people to adopt. But it would happen, maybe slowly at first, but it would happen.)
The source code is out there. If development completely stalls on this project, maybe they should just GPL the thing and let some other group of developers take over. I'm sure there are holes in this suggestion, but it seems a sensible thing to if things really grind to a halt.
Is this the way Slashdot supports open source, fostering internal divides in exchange of ad eyeballs?
:)
Ads? I don't see any ads on Slashdot. Oh wait, that's because I use Firefox with Adblock installed.
Where are all the games like PacMan?
PopCap Games almost exclusively develops these types of games. While Bejewled can suck you in for hours at a time, it's a game you can play in five to ten minutes and still have fun at it.
Just think what would happen if that $10 billion went towards a couple of public school systems.
Absolutely nothing. We've been throwing billions at the public school systems for years and we've got very little to show for it. In fact, things have gotten worse.
In IE, there are options to turn off "friendly" error messages and let the server (not IE) serve you its own error page. It doesn't stop the server from making a "pretty" error page for you, but at least it will stop IE from giving you a generic "friendly" error message.
Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced -> Browsing -> Uncheck the "Show Friendly..." boxes
The article's basic assumption is that Internet-related work is the defining factor in what OS I choose. Adobe hasn't released a Linux version of Photoshop, Illustrator, or InDesign. Many other apps I use on a daily basis are either just not released for Linux, or are at the status of someone's pet project on SourceForge. This is not to knock the wide array of software that is available for Linux, but the software needed for me to do all my daily work is not quite there yet.
In the meantime, I use Firefox for Windows which is nicely patched (and quite quickly patched at that).
Can't this simply be corrected via software? Just decay the other colors as well to keep the color calibration the same.
True, you could constantly re-calibrate with software, but that's a big pain to have to do repeatedly. And regardless, the fact would remain that the overall lifetime of the monitor is still relatively short compared to LCD's.
Don't get the idea that I'm knocking this technology, though. It's still pretty amazing stuff.
Nice as it would be to have one of these, it will be a few years before they are worth buying. One major drawback is that the green component of these screens have a shorter lifetime than the red and blue, not to mention an overall shorter lifetime than LCD's. The early LCD's were not so bad, even with a shorter lifetime, because all three colors decayed at relatively the same rate. With OLED's having a shorter lifetime for green, the color drift will be much more dramatic.
I got the link from this Metafilter post. It has more info about the situation.
But what about the other direction? One guy found out he was getting scammed by a buyer and so instead of selling him a Powerbook, he sold him a P-P-P-Powerbook. :) Gotta love it.
I don't know all the ins and outs, but it seems to be that many people have been burned by the DMCA for trying to let others know about their security problems. I can't remember how many stories on Slashdot I've read that seemed utterly ridiculous because someone was in legal hot water for trying to help some company/institution/organization get their security issues known about.