Star Office is already much more feature-rich than KOffice. The sheer amount of features is probably like 2 to 1 (or even more).
Now you might assume that I do not like KOffice, which is wrong. Microsoft Office and
Star Office actually contain FAR more features than most people ever use.
In fact, most people do not need Microsoft Office, they just buy or pirate it because they THINK they need it. The amount of features is so immense, that it scares people, and make people need COURSES to master the application. Upgrading to new versions of MS Office is for most people totally unnecessary after Office 97.
KOffice have huge potential if they keep on concentrating on making the package easy to use, well integrated with the desktop, and with an acceptable amount of features.
The analogy is almost like Linux vs. Windows. A regular Linux-distribution has an enormous amount of applications and features. Not a single Linux-user has ever needed all of them. Most distributions try to cater for absolutely everyone, and end up alienating the biggest amount of users in the process, the ones that only want to check mail, surf web and write letters.
Well... I stated that there were exceptions, and you think that this is more of the rule.
It all depends on what games you play. Civilization has lots of replay-value, and will probably be interesting even for the developers. Adventure-games, most platform-games, and other story-driven and linear games will not.
Perhaps games with replay-value are the majority, I dunno...
Yes.. 2 years IS a short dev-cycle. How long has GNOME been in development? Linux? Emacs?
My point was that a game is mostly "done with" when people are finished playing, and unless someone decides to create a sequel, it isn't developed any further.
"The anology is this: Can the musician who performs the music enjoy the music just as much as the audience?"
Games are not the same as music. Your analogy works for some games, that is, games with replay-value.
For other games, they are more like "movies" than music. Steven Spielberg will know all the quirks and twists in the plot of Jurassic Park IX, and will therefor perhaps still have enjoyment, but at least not the same as the audience, because Spielberg will have seen the movie in whole and in parts an obscene amount of times before it arrives in the theaters.
I'm sorry... but games is one area where you should not be extremist about free software.
Why?
1. Most has short development cycle and almost no benefit from long-term improvement. (There are exceptions, like multi-player-games that people play for a long time)
2. It is important to not release to much info, because too much information spoils the game for people. This goes against normal development-policies.
3. The developers mostly cannot have the same fun playing the game as others (again, as in 1. there are exceptions), this makes participating for "scratching an itch" impossible.
4. There are a huge amount of people involved that aren't normally in geek-communities; artists, story-developers, musicians, etc.
5. Because of graphical issues like speed, a lot of info is often in the client, that the gamer shouldn't know about, and an open-source version may more easily allow for cheating. It shouldn't be like this, but because of technical obstacles, it is.
This all means that you take away almost all the benefits of regular open-source software (more eyeballs, more developers) and add inn a few bad side effects (spoilers, cheating, sheer costs), and you still demand that all games should be free-as-in-speech?
It just isn't possible to make a living by creating most types of open-source-games. Some may be possible, but your narrow-minded view, would destroy the market for most types of games, if most people thought like you.
Think about the added benefits to the community by having a company like Loki porting even closed source games. They release all of their common libraries under free licenses, and they have helped the community in developing free gaming and multimedia APIs.
The point is, without Loki (a closed-source company), the free software community would be worse off.
I still say that gecko, the Mozilla-engine is mostly way faster at rendering than IE. In some specific cases there might be a different story (possibly also attributed to bugs rather than design-issues), but generally gecko renders faster. Of course this is almost always subjective, I haven't seen any real hard facts yet.
You don't have to compile the kernel. Only for very specific purposes do you ever have to compile the kernel for yourself. The average Linux-user will never, ever have to compile the kernel. This kernel compile FUD is just that, FUD.
Kernel compilation is just a very neat added feature for the Linux savvy.
Opera and Galeon are both faster than IE. They actually start up about as fast as IE, without being preloaded on login.
Re:Okay, nice, but how does it relate to...
on
Mozilla 0.9.3 Released
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Pros:
Much better rendering engine
More fault tolerant
Better support for java and other plugins
More stable
Multi-platform
Requires fewer external libraries
Supports both Qt and Gtk+
Cons:
A bit slower
Uses more memory (some of it is a drawback on "Requires fewer external libraries"
Doesn't integrate that well with a desktop (void if you do not use KDE)
Does not have GUI-counterpart for some of the advanced configuration options
The slower-bit is offset if you use Galeon as a frontend. Which buys you a lot of speed, and somewhat better desktop-integration, on the expense of portability and library-count.
Both Mozilla and Konqueror are good browsers, but Mozilla is more technologically advanced, and the portability issue means a lot for it's acceptance and possible market-share.
.. it isn't the _first_ step. Eazel also did some usability-testing with Nautilus (which is an important part of GNOME), and a lot of talk in the development of Nautilus is different from other projects, because the question "but would this be intuitive?" is asked all the time..
Otherwise I agree totally with what you're saying.
KDE is currently superior in some fields, but one field GNOME is superiour is usability-testing.
Why can the USA can arrest a russian citizen for breaking an american law IN RUSSIA?
If it is argued that the crime was commited on the Internet, and thus _everywhere_, what do I have to do to make sure my work is legit? Block access to my servers for ALL countries where the action is illegal?
Does this mean that I after publishing something on the Internet I may get arrested the next time I go to [insert name of country here] because the published material was illegal in that country?
What would the US think if an american reporter published information regarded as blasphemy in Iran, got arrested there while visiting the country?
No... actually even less so.
You personally have almost no hope in trying to influence the way Windows develops. You DO however have such possibilities in the opensource-world.
Although I agree that it is easier for managers to force a developing direction when they actually pay people.
a) You cannot force volunteers (or companies) to work in one direction. There are plenty of developers trying to make GNOME a better product.
b) Perhaps Ximian thinks this WILL make GNOME a better product?
c) Perhaps Ximian thinks this will make more money for them then just improving GNOME the "old-fashioned way"?
d) If.NET is cool technology, it is important to start implementing it now, so that Microsoft won't be alone in the field.
e) Most of the work will probably be just as functional under KDE as under GNOME, so that your beloved KDE won't be left out. Should people stop developing the Linux kernel, because the desktop needs more work?
.. but I was trying to say what should be taught as "truths".. not what should be discussed in classrooms.
I'm all for legal-discussions on copyright-laws, as long as they are not presented as morally wrong from the beginning.
First: Software and media piracy are illegal, and of course young people should be made aware of what is legal or not. There is a difference between this, and trying to teach children what is immoral and what is not.
The problem is that this sort of illegal activity is not in any way universially accepted as morally wrong. It is laws that were made for protecting the income of artists and corporations.. much in the same way that patent-laws were created.
It is still in some countries regarded as totally legal and within fair-use to share IP-protected material among friends as long as you don't charge for it.
I generally accept IP-laws as I believe it makes it easier to make a living out of arts, and thus making our quality of art higher. It is however a political issue, not a generally accepted truth, and thus should NOT be taught in public schools.
Morality is a personal issue, and I don't buy arguments that breaking the law is always immoral, because this would mean that doing political satire in a country where this is illegal, is immoral.
The only things that should be taught are issues that are beyond common politics. For example: murder, theft, etc..
Before tries to make the assumption; sw/media-piracy == theft, I have to say that this comparison is political as the person being "stolen" from in the act of pirating still has a copy of his/her own.. that is, it does not transfer property.
The anti-trust case has certainly proved otherwise. Both the original court case, and the appeal concluded that MS has a monopoly, and that they abused it.
Although it is most certainly distasteful, it is (under current law) their right to do so.
I'm not sure it is in their best interest though. It may seem so right now, because of their monopoly-situation, that trying to maximise short-term profit using this kind of strategy is wise.
I believe it is just this sort of thinking that may eventually lead to their downfall.
If schools get sick enough of forced-upgrading, high prices, anti-piracy-schemes etc.. they will switch because of their low budget..
And since they may very well help influence thousands of kids each, I think Microsoft should continue to be gentle to them (which my understanding is that they've mostly been so far).
.. would it not be possible to ship Apache with a default-setting that automatically sends the "stop smart-tags"-setting with all loads of the websites on the server.
Then it could be turned on or off individually for each virtualhost.
Of course.. this is not the way it should operate, there should be an "opt in"-tag instead of a "opt out"-tag.
That would be a fantastic move... as far as I know there are no other players in the databse-market, so Red Hat should be able reak in heaps of profit!
I would also look into the databae-market, which is also unexploited.
Slashdot Mirror
Star Office is already much more feature-rich than KOffice. The sheer amount of features is probably like 2 to 1 (or even more).
Now you might assume that I do not like KOffice, which is wrong. Microsoft Office and
Star Office actually contain FAR more features than most people ever use.
In fact, most people do not need Microsoft Office, they just buy or pirate it because they THINK they need it. The amount of features is so immense, that it scares people, and make people need COURSES to master the application. Upgrading to new versions of MS Office is for most people totally unnecessary after Office 97.
KOffice have huge potential if they keep on concentrating on making the package easy to use, well integrated with the desktop, and with an acceptable amount of features.
The analogy is almost like Linux vs. Windows. A regular Linux-distribution has an enormous amount of applications and features. Not a single Linux-user has ever needed all of them. Most distributions try to cater for absolutely everyone, and end up alienating the biggest amount of users in the process, the ones that only want to check mail, surf web and write letters.
Gaute
Well... I stated that there were exceptions, and you think that this is more of the rule.
It all depends on what games you play. Civilization has lots of replay-value, and will probably be interesting even for the developers. Adventure-games, most platform-games, and other story-driven and linear games will not.
Perhaps games with replay-value are the majority, I dunno...
Yes.. 2 years IS a short dev-cycle. How long has GNOME been in development? Linux? Emacs?
My point was that a game is mostly "done with" when people are finished playing, and unless someone decides to create a sequel, it isn't developed any further.
"The anology is this: Can the musician who performs the music enjoy the music just as much as the audience?"
Games are not the same as music. Your analogy works for some games, that is, games with replay-value.
For other games, they are more like "movies" than music. Steven Spielberg will know all the quirks and twists in the plot of Jurassic Park IX, and will therefor perhaps still have enjoyment, but at least not the same as the audience, because Spielberg will have seen the movie in whole and in parts an obscene amount of times before it arrives in the theaters.
I'm sorry... but games is one area where you should not be extremist about free software.
Why?
1. Most has short development cycle and almost no benefit from long-term improvement. (There are exceptions, like multi-player-games that people play for a long time)
2. It is important to not release to much info, because too much information spoils the game for people. This goes against normal development-policies.
3. The developers mostly cannot have the same fun playing the game as others (again, as in 1. there are exceptions), this makes participating for "scratching an itch" impossible.
4. There are a huge amount of people involved that aren't normally in geek-communities; artists, story-developers, musicians, etc.
5. Because of graphical issues like speed, a lot of info is often in the client, that the gamer shouldn't know about, and an open-source version may more easily allow for cheating. It shouldn't be like this, but because of technical obstacles, it is.
This all means that you take away almost all the benefits of regular open-source software (more eyeballs, more developers) and add inn a few bad side effects (spoilers, cheating, sheer costs), and you still demand that all games should be free-as-in-speech?
It just isn't possible to make a living by creating most types of open-source-games. Some may be possible, but your narrow-minded view, would destroy the market for most types of games, if most people thought like you.
Think about the added benefits to the community by having a company like Loki porting even closed source games. They release all of their common libraries under free licenses, and they have helped the community in developing free gaming and multimedia APIs.
The point is, without Loki (a closed-source company), the free software community would be worse off.
I still say that gecko, the Mozilla-engine is mostly way faster at rendering than IE. In some specific cases there might be a different story (possibly also attributed to bugs rather than design-issues), but generally gecko renders faster. Of course this is almost always subjective, I haven't seen any real hard facts yet.
You don't have to compile the kernel. Only for very specific purposes do you ever have to compile the kernel for yourself. The average Linux-user will never, ever have to compile the kernel. This kernel compile FUD is just that, FUD.
Kernel compilation is just a very neat added feature for the Linux savvy.
Opera and Galeon are both faster than IE. They actually start up about as fast as IE, without being preloaded on login.
Cons:
The slower-bit is offset if you use Galeon as a frontend. Which buys you a lot of speed, and somewhat better desktop-integration, on the expense of portability and library-count.
Both Mozilla and Konqueror are good browsers, but Mozilla is more technologically advanced, and the portability issue means a lot for it's acceptance and possible market-share.
MHz != real life speed
The 750MHz PPC is much faster than a Pentium III at 750MHz. As far as I know the 750MHz PPC is about equal to ~ 1.1GHz PIII in most operations.
There is of course faster x86s than PIII-1.1GHz, but it is definitly not the slowest x86.
.. it isn't the _first_ step. Eazel also did some usability-testing with Nautilus (which is an important part of GNOME), and a lot of talk in the development of Nautilus is different from other projects, because the question "but would this be intuitive?" is asked all the time..
Otherwise I agree totally with what you're saying.
KDE is currently superior in some fields, but one field GNOME is superiour is usability-testing.
Why can the USA can arrest a russian citizen for breaking an american law IN RUSSIA?
If it is argued that the crime was commited on the Internet, and thus _everywhere_, what do I have to do to make sure my work is legit? Block access to my servers for ALL countries where the action is illegal?
Does this mean that I after publishing something on the Internet I may get arrested the next time I go to [insert name of country here] because the published material was illegal in that country?
What would the US think if an american reporter published information regarded as blasphemy in Iran, got arrested there while visiting the country?
No... actually even less so.
You personally have almost no hope in trying to influence the way Windows develops. You DO however have such possibilities in the opensource-world.
Although I agree that it is easier for managers to force a developing direction when they actually pay people.
Microsoft has embraced other peoples standards in the past.. it worked for them.
Who is to say that the opensource-community cannot embrace and extend?
Same old arguments heard dozens of times before.
.NET is cool technology, it is important to start implementing it now, so that Microsoft won't be alone in the field.
a) You cannot force volunteers (or companies) to work in one direction. There are plenty of developers trying to make GNOME a better product.
b) Perhaps Ximian thinks this WILL make GNOME a better product?
c) Perhaps Ximian thinks this will make more money for them then just improving GNOME the "old-fashioned way"?
d) If
e) Most of the work will probably be just as functional under KDE as under GNOME, so that your beloved KDE won't be left out. Should people stop developing the Linux kernel, because the desktop needs more work?
.. but I was trying to say what should be taught as "truths".. not what should be discussed in classrooms.
I'm all for legal-discussions on copyright-laws, as long as they are not presented as morally wrong from the beginning.
First: Software and media piracy are illegal, and of course young people should be made aware of what is legal or not. There is a difference between this, and trying to teach children what is immoral and what is not.
The problem is that this sort of illegal activity is not in any way universially accepted as morally wrong. It is laws that were made for protecting the income of artists and corporations.. much in the same way that patent-laws were created.
It is still in some countries regarded as totally legal and within fair-use to share IP-protected material among friends as long as you don't charge for it.
I generally accept IP-laws as I believe it makes it easier to make a living out of arts, and thus making our quality of art higher. It is however a political issue, not a generally accepted truth, and thus should NOT be taught in public schools.
Morality is a personal issue, and I don't buy arguments that breaking the law is always immoral, because this would mean that doing political satire in a country where this is illegal, is immoral.
The only things that should be taught are issues that are beyond common politics. For example: murder, theft, etc..
Before tries to make the assumption; sw/media-piracy == theft, I have to say that this comparison is political as the person being "stolen" from in the act of pirating still has a copy of his/her own.. that is, it does not transfer property.
How is that recursive?
;-).
If you've said "KINI Is Not Illustrator", then I'd agree with you
Yes it is! It is still possible to have a hard-copy of the books in the store, and the value of the thing would still be evident:
- Much less storage needed. The store only has to store preview-copies.
- No need for transport and ordering of books, customers can get their book in a matter of minutes instead of days.
Think about it, your local bookstore could have an almost unlimited sortiment of books, because they just download and print it if needed.The anti-trust case has certainly proved otherwise. Both the original court case, and the appeal concluded that MS has a monopoly, and that they abused it.
Thus, my statement is not exactly without merit.
Although it is most certainly distasteful, it is (under current law) their right to do so.
I'm not sure it is in their best interest though. It may seem so right now, because of their monopoly-situation, that trying to maximise short-term profit using this kind of strategy is wise.
I believe it is just this sort of thinking that may eventually lead to their downfall.
If schools get sick enough of forced-upgrading, high prices, anti-piracy-schemes etc.. they will switch because of their low budget..
And since they may very well help influence thousands of kids each, I think Microsoft should continue to be gentle to them (which my understanding is that they've mostly been so far).
.. would it not be possible to ship Apache with a default-setting that automatically sends the "stop smart-tags"-setting with all loads of the websites on the server.
Then it could be turned on or off individually for each virtualhost.
Of course.. this is not the way it should operate, there should be an "opt in"-tag instead of a "opt out"-tag.
Because both DB2 and Oracle are available on Linux, but perhaps you don't call them "decent"?
The DB-support on Linux is pretty decent.
My move is B5 to C5...
Ehh.. I don't even know the terms.
Gaute
Some of his answers seem to say very little, using lots of words, and thus makes the interview a little less interesting.
Well, I'd better get used to this, as the election in Norway is coming in the autumn.
That would be a fantastic move... as far as I know there are no other players in the databse-market, so Red Hat should be able reak in heaps of profit!
I would also look into the databae-market, which is also unexploited.
:-)