Kmail and Korganizer are both applications. I have moved my to using my smartphone for calendar notifications over a PC because it is always with me. I do use my PC to make the appointments since a full sized keyboard is so much better. Having Icons on the desktop is a plus as is multi monitor support. Workspaces not so much. I have never really gotten used to using them on Linux or OS/X. Maybe if I had a monster machine for Linux or OS/X and had a few VMs running on them I would. But as a whole I fear that Linux desktops have gotten away from usability over flash. I spend a lot of time coding and what I want is a good API. Take sound as an example. Every system should have a simple way for an application to call up the system mixer. I want apps that have a consistent look a and feel and I don't want a bunch of strangeness on my desktop. I have been using computers since 1982. I can see the value of some customization. But the effort and the wars over them just tick me off. Gnome worked fine for me. If they had done nothing but boost the speed and reliability I would have been a happy man. KDE I have used and it works just fine but it always seemed to have the design sense of a ransom note. It was just too fiddly. It reminds me of Windows in that way. I uses XP daily and it still looks like it was designed by fisher price. If you like KDE and it works for you great. The thing is that I can get my work done on XP, Gnome, probably KDE 4, and OS/X. None of them suck so bad that they drive me crazy. Out of all of them I find OS/X the most usable but I have not really used the new Gnome or KDE. Maybe I should upgrade my Linux machine but it works!
Yes they are natural and have been for a long time. They are not lifeless just have a lower density of life. Almost all life starts with plant life. plant life needs sun light and nutrients So in the deep mid ocean what plants you have near the surface when they die sink to the bottom. When fish eat the waste sinks. When the the fish that dies eats them they sink. So you have have the energy source and the nutrients separated by miles of water column. Unless you have vertical currents there is not much mixing. BTW the richest locations in the sea are where deep water raises to the surface. So yes they are natural because they are caused by the laws of physics. Kind of like how there really isn't much life above 1700 meters in the atmosphere unless there is some kind of land sticking up.
Yea you use the term child yet you use language that is only impressive to an 8th grader. As to growing up stop trying to show off that you have learned those naughty words that you mommy didn't want you to know. You are also humorless and frankly just not entertaining. I dismiss you as a child that thinks they understand more than they do. You may go now.
The whole desktop thing is overblown. I have very little use for widgets or what what ever your desktop calls program updated icons. As far as customization that can also go too far. I want a nice clean UI elements and wall paper. The big weakness for the desktop right now are notifications. What it really comes down to is the API as far as I am concerned. Your desktop environment is used to launch apps and maybe manage files. Everything else is just fluff. The API that it offers the developer is the key IMHO. Yes having complete scripting control is cute but who cares? I use a computer to do thing.
True but the cost of the Saturn V was spread over very few launches and they where produced at a very low rate. With modern manufacturing methods like 3D CAD systems, modern materials like LiAl, and modern electronics there are some savings to be had. You are correct that it will be no where near what we have seen in microprocessors but even there are savings that could be had. The other thing is I didn't say we should build Saturn Vs just that this wasn't bigger than the Saturn. Now parts of the Saturn like the F-1a which never flew and the J-2x are still interesting today. Maybe a Saturn Va using modernized F-1a and the J-2X along with the a LiAl structure would be worth having. As to the Falcon 9 Heavy? Well people seem to think I am down on it. I am not because it is progress. My comment was on the size hype that SpaceX was pushing.
I guess you are. a. a Space X fanboi or b, kind of clueless.
I mean really Space X is the one with size issues. They are the ones that put out the headline saying they where building "The World's Biggest Rocket". It is the hype that ticks me off. Had the headline was SpaceX is producing the cheapest rocket or a new breakthrough in launch costs then I would have never bothered to make a comment. But really when they are not even matching the old Saturn V and bragging about size? Yea they need to be called out. Now putting aside the hype this is really cool and I am really looking forward to seeing this go up. I can probably see the launch from my office window. But as to being disappointed yes I am. I was a child during Apollo and we where told that we would have space stations, and moon bases by now. We sort of have a space station but it sure is tiny compared to what we where supposed to have by now. When was a kid I was disappointed that I was too young to be the first man to land on mars. Now I fear I am so old that I may live to see the first man land on Mars.
The Saturn V was produced in small numbers and using 1960s cost was no option development. Using modern production methods the cost should be much lower if they produced it today. Frankly the only parts I would keep from the old Saturn program would be the F-1A which they never flew and the J-2 which we just developed new versions of. Use LiAL for the tanks and user modern electronics and it could cost a lot less. The Falcon 9 Heavy is really cool. It is the hype that is rubbing me the wrong way.
I agree but the the hype they are using ticks me off. If they had just said that they where going to launch their largest rocket ever or even the Falcon 9 Heavy. I am more anti hype then anti Space X. I actually think this is really very cool but I want my nuclear powered Orion class shuttle with Pan Am markings! It is 2011 and I have been lied too.
In 1969 we expected Pan Am to be flying passengers to the moon. In 1975 they where talking about O'Neil colonies at L5 with 10,000 people living in them and also at that time they where talking about 100 shuttle launches a year... Sorry but we are so far behind what was expected when I was a child that it is just depressing.
Call me when we have something that can out lift the Saturn V. Yes I know they say this will cheaper but still I expected us to be much farther along than we are.
It really depends on your needs. http://www.cmsmatrix.org/matrix/cms-matrix Will allow you to compare CMSs. Drupal is a much more complex and flexable system then Wordpress. That comes at a cost in simplicity. I think the key here is "big projects like this"
True but the Osborne cost $4000 adjusted for inflation and over $1700 in 1980 dollars. So lets compare it to say a MacBook Air, Mac Book Pro, or any number of Windows 7 Notebooks and the value really shifts. Or you could compare the iPad to say an Atari 400, Apple II, or say a Commodore 64. Adjusted for inflation maybe even a VIC-20. Just to be fair the iPad is really more of a home system than a business tool right now.
Not exactly correct. Take wordstar for example and compare it to any modern program. Fonts? Yea right you where lucky if the screen could display bold and italics. Graphics? What? Spell checker? It was a separate program you ran.
The good old days where not so go. Calcstar and Visicalc? Not bad but they are very limited to the dataset they can use. If you want Visicalc you can still run it on a new PC. It is really fast and very tiny.
Yes Wordstar could run in 64k. It could even handle very big docs but it did so by keeping them on disk. Do a search and replace on a large doc and you will learn patience. Yes it is so much nicer now to be a programmer. You can expect megabytes of free memory so you can put an entire document in memory at once and not worry about it. Customers do want to handle much larger datasets then they used to. Many graphical images are larger then the entire mass storage available on an a Micro from the 80s. Sound files are larger than the hard drives of the IBM XT and AT when they first shipped. As someone that lived at the time and worked on those computers I can tell you that yes there where some great highly optimized programs back in the day. The thing is they where also feature limited. Today we are resource rich so we can put the effort into more features. With a good program every feature is there because someone wanted it or it solved a problem for the users. Hey if you want to go back to the "good old days" you can grab the source to joe and add dot commands and printing. Now I do agree with you in one area. Feature creep is a problem. Most people only use 10% of Microsoft Word or Excel. There are many times when I do wish that I could have a small fast spreadsheet or WordProcessor that loaded quickly and then went away just as quick. Mainly a spreadsheet. We are also missing Personal Information Managers. We have great databases but no really good tools for dealing with what I think of as list managers. Evernote isn't bad and frankly we are using universal search more and more to solve that issue.
I do agree with you that people that produce the work should have the right to set the price of that work and control distribution. What it does come down to is this is commercial business and they want to make money. Trying to stop piracy is just not a workable solution. It is like trying to stop people from stealing penny candy. Services like Hulu are a great way to make money on content. Why sell a DVD when you can sell new adds on old content over and over again? Just how much money has I Love Lucy made? Star Trek? Why sell the DVD except to the collector market?
Nope it is just sour grapes. The Zoom is a good device but frankly the iPad2 just has a lot more going for it right now. It has a bigger software base. More of them are on the market. It has a very good and easy to use UI. The low end iPad is cheaper then the cheapest Xoom and the same level iPad2 costs the same. So what Apple has managed to do is combine all their classic strengths of design and user-interface design with all of the strengths that Windows used to gain market-share. The iPad2 wins on cost and sofware base as well. The whole open vs closed really doesn't matter to most consumers and never did. The only reason to buy the Xoom over the iPad2 today is if you are just like Android more than IOS. You will save no money and gain next to nothing in the software base. Oh and I am an Android cell phone users. I love my EVO and it does compete well with the iPhone IMHO but when you are talking tablets the Ipad2 is just a very good product at a good price with a large software and userbase. That makes it very hard to beat.
Frankly the content companies are a disaster of run away greed. As the cost of creation and distribution have gone down and the volume of consumption have increased they want to matain not just their margins but their price! It is like the world can now all want computers and they cost only a $100 to make and then try to sell them for $20,000. A great example are cable box DVRs. Take a look at the size of a ROKU box sometime. There is no reason that a cable box needs to be any bigger. There is also no need for every DVR to have a hard drive. If the content providers allowed it the cable companies could simply have a SAN and you used that for your DVR. You could even mark the shows so that you didn't duplicate the recordings for users. And of course the logical extension of that would be for the cable companies to keep every show for say the last two weeks or month and if you missed a show you could just watch it when you wanted to. No need to remember to record it.But that is just to consumer friendly.
which is why I said it was just okay. Not terrible but not state of the art. IOS is a good OS but even there I would say that the UI is not the best on the market. That would have to go to WebOS. The SDK is the best I have seen in the mobile space. That is the point the iPhone 4 is still a very good device. But it is not better in every category anymore. The Next Gen IPhone will have a dual core and a better camera. My bet is that it will support 1080P video as well as having a better front facing camer.
You do not have to make a lens that much larger to double the area. Also take a look at Nokia's phones they have very good 8MP cameras and optics on them. At this point you sound like an Apple ad. Today the Iphone 4s hardware is at best just Okay. They still have a very good display but the CPU is just okay. IOS is still a very good OS but the hardware really needs an update to stay on top including the camera.
It was a very popular computer for a while. The software that came with it was great and at the time there really where no laptops yet. To put it in perspective it would be as if someone offered a good i5 laptop today with Windows 7 ultimate and Office Professional for $600. When Kaypro came out with there systems they offered the an equally as good software bundle.
As I said just think about all you could do and then multiply it by a lot of other people that are also thinking of what they could do. Not to mention that many places could provide free wifi as well. I am hoping that Google will also get a CATV deal out of this. If the idiot content providers don't bork it imagine what they could do. Instead of standard cable boxes you could use something like the ROKU box for your cable box. DVR? Not a problem use a datacenter with a SAN. how much cheaper would that be than a drive per user that Comcast uses for a DVR.
Google is planning on their network to be much faster. The rest are just guesses but I am betting that Googles will be cheaper and have no caps. Plus I am willing to bet that they will not be any throttling of say NetFlix.
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Dude and how many people still don't get it?
Why complain when someone gets it correct?
Kmail and Korganizer are both applications. I have moved my to using my smartphone for calendar notifications over a PC because it is always with me. I do use my PC to make the appointments since a full sized keyboard is so much better. Having Icons on the desktop is a plus as is multi monitor support. Workspaces not so much. I have never really gotten used to using them on Linux or OS/X. Maybe if I had a monster machine for Linux or OS/X and had a few VMs running on them I would. But as a whole I fear that Linux desktops have gotten away from usability over flash. I spend a lot of time coding and what I want is a good API. Take sound as an example. Every system should have a simple way for an application to call up the system mixer. I want apps that have a consistent look a and feel and I don't want a bunch of strangeness on my desktop. I have been using computers since 1982. I can see the value of some customization. But the effort and the wars over them just tick me off. Gnome worked fine for me. If they had done nothing but boost the speed and reliability I would have been a happy man. KDE I have used and it works just fine but it always seemed to have the design sense of a ransom note. It was just too fiddly. It reminds me of Windows in that way. I uses XP daily and it still looks like it was designed by fisher price.
If you like KDE and it works for you great. The thing is that I can get my work done on XP, Gnome, probably KDE 4, and OS/X. None of them suck so bad that they drive me crazy. Out of all of them I find OS/X the most usable but I have not really used the new Gnome or KDE. Maybe I should upgrade my Linux machine but it works!
Yes they are natural and have been for a long time. They are not lifeless just have a lower density of life. Almost all life starts with plant life. plant life needs sun light and nutrients So in the deep mid ocean what plants you have near the surface when they die sink to the bottom. When fish eat the waste sinks. When the the fish that dies eats them they sink. So you have have the energy source and the nutrients separated by miles of water column. Unless you have vertical currents there is not much mixing. BTW the richest locations in the sea are where deep water raises to the surface. So yes they are natural because they are caused by the laws of physics. Kind of like how there really isn't much life above 1700 meters in the atmosphere unless there is some kind of land sticking up.
Yea you use the term child yet you use language that is only impressive to an 8th grader. As to growing up stop trying to show off that you have learned those naughty words that you mommy didn't want you to know.
You are also humorless and frankly just not entertaining.
I dismiss you as a child that thinks they understand more than they do. You may go now.
The whole desktop thing is overblown. I have very little use for widgets or what what ever your desktop calls program updated icons. As far as customization that can also go too far. I want a nice clean UI elements and wall paper. The big weakness for the desktop right now are notifications. What it really comes down to is the API as far as I am concerned. Your desktop environment is used to launch apps and maybe manage files. Everything else is just fluff. The API that it offers the developer is the key IMHO. Yes having complete scripting control is cute but who cares? I use a computer to do thing.
True but the cost of the Saturn V was spread over very few launches and they where produced at a very low rate. With modern manufacturing methods like 3D CAD systems, modern materials like LiAl, and modern electronics there are some savings to be had. You are correct that it will be no where near what we have seen in microprocessors but even there are savings that could be had. The other thing is I didn't say we should build Saturn Vs just that this wasn't bigger than the Saturn. Now parts of the Saturn like the F-1a which never flew and the J-2x are still interesting today. Maybe a Saturn Va using modernized F-1a and the J-2X along with the a LiAl structure would be worth having.
As to the Falcon 9 Heavy? Well people seem to think I am down on it. I am not because it is progress. My comment was on the size hype that SpaceX was pushing.
I guess you are.
a. a Space X fanboi
or
b, kind of clueless.
I mean really Space X is the one with size issues. They are the ones that put out the headline saying they where building "The World's Biggest Rocket".
It is the hype that ticks me off. Had the headline was SpaceX is producing the cheapest rocket or a new breakthrough in launch costs then I would have never bothered to make a comment.
But really when they are not even matching the old Saturn V and bragging about size? Yea they need to be called out.
Now putting aside the hype this is really cool and I am really looking forward to seeing this go up. I can probably see the launch from my office window.
But as to being disappointed yes I am. I was a child during Apollo and we where told that we would have space stations, and moon bases by now. We sort of have a space station but it sure is tiny compared to what we where supposed to have by now. When was a kid I was disappointed that I was too young to be the first man to land on mars. Now I fear I am so old that I may live to see the first man land on Mars.
The Saturn V was produced in small numbers and using 1960s cost was no option development. Using modern production methods the cost should be much lower if they produced it today. Frankly the only parts I would keep from the old Saturn program would be the F-1A which they never flew and the J-2 which we just developed new versions of. Use LiAL for the tanks and user modern electronics and it could cost a lot less.
The Falcon 9 Heavy is really cool. It is the hype that is rubbing me the wrong way.
I agree but the the hype they are using ticks me off. If they had just said that they where going to launch their largest rocket ever or even the Falcon 9 Heavy. I am more anti hype then anti Space X. I actually think this is really very cool but I want my nuclear powered Orion class shuttle with Pan Am markings! It is 2011 and I have been lied too.
In 1969 we expected Pan Am to be flying passengers to the moon. In 1975 they where talking about O'Neil colonies at L5 with 10,000 people living in them and also at that time they where talking about 100 shuttle launches a year...
Sorry but we are so far behind what was expected when I was a child that it is just depressing.
Call me when we have something that can out lift the Saturn V. Yes I know they say this will cheaper but still I expected us to be much farther along than we are.
It really depends on your needs.
http://www.cmsmatrix.org/matrix/cms-matrix Will allow you to compare CMSs. Drupal is a much more complex and flexable system then Wordpress. That comes at a cost in simplicity. I think the key here is "big projects like this"
True but the Osborne cost $4000 adjusted for inflation and over $1700 in 1980 dollars. So lets compare it to say a MacBook Air, Mac Book Pro, or any number of Windows 7 Notebooks and the value really shifts.
Or you could compare the iPad to say an Atari 400, Apple II, or say a Commodore 64. Adjusted for inflation maybe even a VIC-20. Just to be fair the iPad is really more of a home system than a business tool right now.
Not exactly correct. Take wordstar for example and compare it to any modern program.
Fonts? Yea right you where lucky if the screen could display bold and italics.
Graphics? What?
Spell checker? It was a separate program you ran.
The good old days where not so go. Calcstar and Visicalc? Not bad but they are very limited to the dataset they can use. If you want Visicalc you can still run it on a new PC. It is really fast and very tiny.
Yes Wordstar could run in 64k. It could even handle very big docs but it did so by keeping them on disk. Do a search and replace on a large doc and you will learn patience. Yes it is so much nicer now to be a programmer. You can expect megabytes of free memory so you can put an entire document in memory at once and not worry about it. Customers do want to handle much larger datasets then they used to. Many graphical images are larger then the entire mass storage available on an a Micro from the 80s. Sound files are larger than the hard drives of the IBM XT and AT when they first shipped.
As someone that lived at the time and worked on those computers I can tell you that yes there where some great highly optimized programs back in the day. The thing is they where also feature limited. Today we are resource rich so we can put the effort into more features. With a good program every feature is there because someone wanted it or it solved a problem for the users.
Hey if you want to go back to the "good old days" you can grab the source to joe and add dot commands and printing.
Now I do agree with you in one area. Feature creep is a problem. Most people only use 10% of Microsoft Word or Excel. There are many times when I do wish that I could have a small fast spreadsheet or WordProcessor that loaded quickly and then went away just as quick. Mainly a spreadsheet. We are also missing Personal Information Managers. We have great databases but no really good tools for dealing with what I think of as list managers. Evernote isn't bad and frankly we are using universal search more and more to solve that issue.
I do agree with you that people that produce the work should have the right to set the price of that work and control distribution.
What it does come down to is this is commercial business and they want to make money. Trying to stop piracy is just not a workable solution. It is like trying to stop people from stealing penny candy. Services like Hulu are a great way to make money on content. Why sell a DVD when you can sell new adds on old content over and over again? Just how much money has I Love Lucy made? Star Trek? Why sell the DVD except to the collector market?
Would frog or surrender monkey then be the correct slur?
Nope it is just sour grapes. The Zoom is a good device but frankly the iPad2 just has a lot more going for it right now.
It has a bigger software base.
More of them are on the market.
It has a very good and easy to use UI.
The low end iPad is cheaper then the cheapest Xoom and the same level iPad2 costs the same.
So what Apple has managed to do is combine all their classic strengths of design and user-interface design with all of the strengths that Windows used to gain market-share. The iPad2 wins on cost and sofware base as well. The whole open vs closed really doesn't matter to most consumers and never did.
The only reason to buy the Xoom over the iPad2 today is if you are just like Android more than IOS. You will save no money and gain next to nothing in the software base.
Oh and I am an Android cell phone users. I love my EVO and it does compete well with the iPhone IMHO but when you are talking tablets the Ipad2 is just a very good product at a good price with a large software and userbase. That makes it very hard to beat.
Frankly the content companies are a disaster of run away greed. As the cost of creation and distribution have gone down and the volume of consumption have increased they want to matain not just their margins but their price! It is like the world can now all want computers and they cost only a $100 to make and then try to sell them for $20,000.
A great example are cable box DVRs.
Take a look at the size of a ROKU box sometime. There is no reason that a cable box needs to be any bigger. There is also no need for every DVR to have a hard drive. If the content providers allowed it the cable companies could simply have a SAN and you used that for your DVR. You could even mark the shows so that you didn't duplicate the recordings for users. And of course the logical extension of that would be for the cable companies to keep every show for say the last two weeks or month and if you missed a show you could just watch it when you wanted to. No need to remember to record it.But that is just to consumer friendly.
which is why I said it was just okay. Not terrible but not state of the art. IOS is a good OS but even there I would say that the UI is not the best on the market. That would have to go to WebOS. The SDK is the best I have seen in the mobile space. That is the point the iPhone 4 is still a very good device. But it is not better in every category anymore. The Next Gen IPhone will have a dual core and a better camera. My bet is that it will support 1080P video as well as having a better front facing camer.
Well when the less advanced 95% finally can make something as cool then they can publish their specs in that commie measuring system.
You do not have to make a lens that much larger to double the area. Also take a look at Nokia's phones they have very good 8MP cameras and optics on them. At this point you sound like an Apple ad. Today the Iphone 4s hardware is at best just Okay. They still have a very good display but the CPU is just okay. IOS is still a very good OS but the hardware really needs an update to stay on top including the camera.
It was a very popular computer for a while. The software that came with it was great and at the time there really where no laptops yet. To put it in perspective it would be as if someone offered a good i5 laptop today with Windows 7 ultimate and Office Professional for $600. When Kaypro came out with there systems they offered the an equally as good software bundle.
As I said just think about all you could do and then multiply it by a lot of other people that are also thinking of what they could do. Not to mention that many places could provide free wifi as well. I am hoping that Google will also get a CATV deal out of this. If the idiot content providers don't bork it imagine what they could do. Instead of standard cable boxes you could use something like the ROKU box for your cable box. DVR? Not a problem use a datacenter with a SAN. how much cheaper would that be than a drive per user that Comcast uses for a DVR.
Well here is the answer. Can any company be worse than Time Warner and Comcast? I don't think so.
Google is planning on their network to be much faster. The rest are just guesses but I am betting that Googles will be cheaper and have no caps. Plus I am willing to bet that they will not be any throttling of say NetFlix.