I asked this question of the KDE team back during their interview and the response was basically that QT applications have some sort of unified printing subsystem and that's what they make use of. Well, that's great if your application is QT based, but most applications for X are not and I can only assume this includes Corel's products.
So basically my question is this. Having ported graphic-intensive applications to Linux, how do you feel the lack of a unified printing subsystem will affect Linux's viability on the desktop level? I know from personal experience that coding print support into a native X windows applications is several orders of magnitude more difficult than printing from a Windows application simply because the MFC architecture provides a nicely coupled printing subsystem built around the same architecture as the display subsystem. Do you know of a move or an architecture under X that more closely ressembles this approach and if so, how do you feel it compares? If not, how are desktop grade applications going to compete on the Linux platform when they have such a large problem to overcome individually?
And I guess on a related note, how do Corel products address this problem? I remember Wordperfect 7 for Linux included a large number of printer drivers that I assume Corel had written themselves. Do you feel that this is a reasonable approach for all applications to take? If not, what do you propose as a more general solution?
Corel seems to be billing this as support for Windows applications under Linux. This isn't quite correct. They even go so far as to say it provides support for Windows applications with no additional hardware. That's blatantly incorrect. Not only do you need additional hardware, you need a whole PC! This is nothing more than a Windows Terminal Server solution. You have to have an existing Windows PC sitting around somewhere on your network and run the applications off it. GraphOn merely "exports" the display of those applications to the Linux client. Big whoop. This isn't the problem most people are interested in having solved.
You mean, xvncviewer works wonderfully SLOW. Plus, as other posters have pointed out, VNC solves a slightly different problem. It does not allow individual, multi-user application support on the client. It only provides a screen scape type interface to a Windows box. The two are very different. Furthermore, the group working on VNC does not have enough information about the Windows API to render screen updates in a reasonably efficient manner. This isn't their fault and I think what they've been able to do up to this point is amazing! I use it sometimes for my home network, but it certainly doesn't qualify as a competing product to what GraphOn claims to do.
> Nah! People who spend 16 hours a day coding > are just not good enough.
OK, there are two types of people that spend 16 hours a day coding. Those that are doing the work a typical person would complete in 8 hours and those that are doing the work a typical person would take 48 hours to complete. Those that fall into the former category are just pathetic and eventually get weeded out by keen management or ruthless peer pressure. Those that fall into the latter category are the ones being discussed here.
I assure you, no piece of good quality, feature rich, rock solid software was written by a group of people coding for 8 hours then going home to enjoy their "real" life every day. Complex problems require dedication to solve in a timely manner. Typically, that dedication will come at the expense of focus on other tasks.
The trick is to balance yourself so that you are not constantly being asked to focus yourself 100% of the time on software related tasks. When you have a tough problem in front of you, however, and if you're a "true" coder in the sense that you truly love the challenge and work that you do, it isn't because you have poor time management skills that you choose to sit in front of your monitor for 16 hours straight. Rather, it's because you're so dedicated to the task at hand and because you're so interested in delivering a clean and elegant solution to that problem that you've chosen to sacrifice some part of your other life to make sure that happens.
It's all about choice and the reasons behind that choice. If you choose to stay because you're behind on your workload and because you lack the skills necessary to complete a typical workload in a typical amount of time, then you suck. If you choose to stay because you're engrossed in what you're doing and you're getting a great deal of pleasure out of the progress you're making, then you're the type of person being discussed here. Trust me, it isn't just because the person has poor time management skills.
Dork. I can't believe I'm replying to this either. The point isn't about the proper handling of infinites. Believe me, I understand the whole discussion is baseless given how silly infinites are being treated in his signature. The point is about simple algebraic substraction, assuming infinity could even be treated that way. Which, of course, it can not.
Come on! Lighten up! Is this how the Linux community is going to react every time some piece of commercial software is ported to our fine OS? Cut these guys some slack! Have you ever tried to write an application as complicated as a browser? Even targetting ONE platform is immensely complex.
Yes, the rendering quarks and their time to port might suggest some slight problems in their cross-platform architecture, but geez! Software just isn't that easy, folks! Personally, I'm amazed they have it working at all...
If someone were to ask me to port some huge piece of graphic code to X-windows, I'd estimate about a year for a completion time. X ain't easy, HTML rendering ain't easy, cross platform threading ain't easy, making money off software ain't easy...and these guys are trying to do it all. So the version they're throwing out before Christmas is a little buggy. Big freaking deal. They're a small company supporting several different platforms! X and UNIX are not the most natural environments to step into.
Cut them some slack and offer some words of encouragement when a company is willing to port their software over to Linux. That's what most people want, right? Application support under Linux? Even if it's not an application you're gonna use, it's still a step in the right direction. The more companies that support Linux, the more well known and accepted out platform becomes. Before long, you have companies *assuming* they'll have to support Linux rather than asking if they should bother or not...
Does anybody else find this weird? I mean, how well does Linux actually compare to Solaris on Sun boxes? It would seem to me that the group most capable of writing an OS for a particular platform is the group actually developing the platform itself...
Just how well can a general purpose OS like Linux really stand up against a highly optimized, well matured, platform specific (yes, I know x86 Solaris exists, but that was really an after thought), targetted OS like Solaris? Solaris has years of dedicated, well funded, talented effort poured into it *for* the Sun platform.
Personally, if I had a big ol' 4500 sitting in my cube, I'd probably *want* Solaris on it. I love Linux, but sometimes there are other choices that make a bit more sense. I'm not sure Linux on Sun machines makes sense.
Putting the whole patent silliness aside for a second, I wonder if B&N could introduce a more technically-savvy (n+1)/n-Click approach. The first click brings up a box that says "Do you wish to auto-order this item and all subsequent items?". If the user says "yes", then he is allowed to click the same button later to auto order things without the prompt. I would envision the button initially saying "2-Click", then "1.5-Click", then "1.33-Click", then "1.25-Click", etc.
That's different from the 1-Click approach in that it's prompting the user to agree to the order after the first click, but subsequent clicks are auto-ordered for them until that shipment is processed (at which time, it starts over).
This has the advantage of approaching 1-Click technology as n approaches infinity.:-)
The good thing is that at least this fight is against someone with (relatively) deep pockets.
The bad part is that it's just as likely B&N will simply make their ordering system a "two-click" setup than fight with Amazon over a patent issue. B&N isn't in the business of proving the patent system is silly. They're in the business of selling books. If the bottom line says a fight over a patent issue isn't worth the trouble (i.e., they're not likely to loose a bunch of customers simply because they remove the one-click approach), then I bet they'll just decide to do away with one-click rather than fight it. They have nothing to gain just by proving the patent system is stupid, so they'll probably not bother.
Those of you interested in the release of the 533Mhz K6-2...you're welcome. I *just* placed an order for the 500Mhz chip this morning. So, of course, to ensure that the things I buy are immediately outdated, AMD felt it necessary to announce the 533 model today...
I believe that one of the MAJOR problems facing *any* UNIX system wishing to compete on the desktop front is application level support for a printing subsystem as well as low level printer driver support. It's been a while since I've coded X-apps, but from what I recall, there was no way to "cleanly" handle print functionality. By that I mean, I always ended up with one routine to draw to the screen and a completely separate routine to write my PostScript output for printing. I believe this may still be the case give how many different print interfaces I see in various applications running under Linux. No two user interfaces are the same and no two produce similar results. To an end user (at least at the desktop level), this is extremely frustrating and it's one of the main reasons I *have* to keep Windows around. I need to print things reliably and with a high degree of quality and there's just no clean, easy way to do that under Linux or any other UNIX OS for that matter.
As for device driver support, I've used Ghostscript extensively in the past and while it's impressive, it's a FAR, FAR cry from being comparable to a vendor-supplied, Windoze-based driver equivalent with regard to quality of output and reliable printing. As an example, try printing a high resolution image to an Epson Photo 700 under Windows and then do the same under Linux using Ghostscript. The two are completely different and it's not in favor of Ghostscript.
All this leads me to my question for you guys. I use KDE along with KWM as my working environment at home. How do you see printing functionality being affected or enhanced by KDE and do you have any suggestions for how to improve upon the current state of things? Is there a huge re-write of printing support under *nix systems that I don't know about and that most applications these days are being coded to? I strongly suspect so, because there's no way in hell Linux will be able to compete in the desktop market if every application is required to write out postscript data manually and/or include printer drivers for every printer known to man. Both Windows and Java take an approach to printer support that ties printing code to display code and I believe something similar is *really* needed under Linux and/or X11. Do you guys have a feel for what the future holds with regards to printer support under *nix systems? Having coded a complete office package yourselves, I'm sure you have a pretty good idea...:-)
You know what gets me about stories like this? It's that I have to read so many *stupid* posts made by arrogant, self-centered US citizens. I hate that it's these few people who are doing the most mouthing and getting the most attention drawn to them. It's really no wonder the rest of the world is starting to hate us. I hate those same people and I'm about as American as they come.
Please don't judge all Americans by the example set by the few that seem to do the most talking. I keep seeing posts that say things like "you Americans are all the same" or "Americans are so arrogant". Geez, come on. Stop making blanket statements like that. We're not ALL alike.
The United States of America has done a great deal for the world; that's true. However, the good ol' US of A isn't spic-n-span clean and we're FAR from self-sufficient. The world has done more for us than we have for it. Hell, the simple fact that we're only a couple hundred years old should make that point fairly obvious. Yeah, we seem to be "on top" right now, but that changes. It absolutely will change. And when it does, you better hope we have some friends still around or else the US of A will be no more.
I guess this post is making a dual plea. First, to my fellow Americans that are making all these ridiculous posts...grow up! Look around you. The "rest" of the world is a hell of a lot larger than we are; their interests and opinions are more important than ours and you better learn that. Second, to those non-US folks reading all these posts and drawing blanket conclusions about Americans...stop it! You're falling into a trap unknowingly set by these idiots. We're not all that simple minded and we're not all that hateful.
It says that they are all being released at roughly the same time, but CD copying and distribution for non windows platforms doesn't have the same "priority" as Windows platforms.
That's true, but the original poster still has a valid point even though he said "released" instead of "distributed". If companies (distributors, game makers, etc.) are going to watch Q3 sales data to determine future platform targetting plans, then the distributors really have to get the different platform versions out at the same time. Otherwise, the data is *definitely* going to be skewed. I doubt they're going to take that effect into account when they throw up the graphs of Windows vs. Linux vs. Mac sales statistics.
Doing things the way they're gonna do them (by putting Windows versions on the shelf first) is basically preloading the scales...and it's not in our favor...
>> It's just bad business practice and it >> hurts us all.
> Well, it doesn't hurt RSA. Monopolies, > de-facto and otherwise, are very profitable.
I don't consider RSA a member of the set "us". I still believe their business practice has hurt "us" all. The term "us" in this case means all software developers just trying to implement a set of project requirements. There is no good reason why I HAVE to use an RSA algorithm to talk to a secure web server. There is only one reason, a very stupid one at that, that forces me to do this... RSA has bullied itself into market dominance. And until their crazy little patent expires, development on other similar algorithms has been hindered. Granted, there are plenty of other alternatives that have been developed despite RSA's position, but until most major browsers *and* servers support these alternatives, I contend that their development has been hampered greatly.
> In other words, if you're against the recent > Amazon patent, you're against stupid patents. > If you're against the RSA patents, you're > against software patents.
For the record, I didn't say I was against the RSA patent; just their business practice. I believe RSA has a valid claim to their particular way of approaching encryption. I think they have every right to patent that idea. And if anyone wants to mangle data according to their specification, then they should feel obligated to pay RSA for that right. What I'm against, however, is the fact that RSA used that single, annoying little patent to stiffle deployment and, I'm sure to some extent, development of more robust, open solutions to the same problem. That's RSA's fault...not the patent office.
It's RSA's implementation of their crypto algorithms. Here's an example of how one might find one's self in need of this (speaking from unfortunate experience). Let's say you wish to write a monitoring product that will submit queries to a secure web server and check that the applications being accessed are functional. In order to do this, one would need to construct a secure socket. In order to do this, one would need to implement a cipher suite that matches one of the cipher suites supported by the web server being accessed.
Non of this implies use of RSA algorithms. However, RSA has their own little monopoly thing going where the ONLY cipher suites supported by the Netscape Enterprise webserver and Microsoft's IIS make use of RSA-patented algorithms.:-( This is very unfortunate because RSA can and will charge an arm and a leg, literally, for the privledge of using their super-cool algorithms in a commercial product. Nevermind the fact that they aren't the only game in town with it comes to cryptography.
It's just very frustrating to be forced into a licensing agreement with a company because they hold a stanglehold on the market. There are plenty of good, FREE crypto algorithms out and about, but this doesn't matter. You can't use them because the webservers you wish to talk to don't support them. I assume RSA forced Netscape and Microsoft into some sort of exclusive arrangement that prevents them from using anything other than RSA stuff, but I don't know that for sure.
It's just bad business practice and it hurts us all.
Anyway, the BSAFE SSL-C library allows an application to make use of RSA algorithms over secure socket connections. I just wish Red Hat had also gotten a license for the SSL-J stuff as well...about 90% of my work these days is in Java. Yet another C library that I'd have to write wrappers around in Java just doesn't help me much.
Buy a vowel, fella. He wasn't whining. He was stating a fact and offering his support in favor of Red Hat's decision. He went out of his way to be very polite in his statement of facts.
If anything, you're the one whining with your "The world does not revolve around the US" statement. Duh. If I recall correctly, the world revolves around the sun.
It's OK that only 16% of the web is summarized by search engines. The other 84% is dedicated to sex sites anyway...and we all have those bookmarked by now...
My wife works for Bell Atlantic in the DC, Virginia, Maryland area. They're currently running an ADSL trial here and, of course, we wanted to sign up as "friendlies". We were denied. The reason was flatly stated that "Linux users are too technical".
BA was interested in people they could hand-hold through the process. They were not interested in having someone on their network that could "get around certain roadblocks". I'm not 100% sure what those roadblocks are, but it is apparent that at least in this area, BA's reason for not supporting Linux is that they're afraid Linux users are smarter than they are... I didn't fuss about this too much because, as it turns out, our geographical area isn't support anyway. Oh well.
I doubt they'll support the internal VSP cable modem as they (stupidly?) included a 56k *win*modem on that board... Ugh. But, of course, that assumes they don't come up with some way of actually using the winmodem under Linux.
This is an internal release to ati-team. It is not secret or closed-source, you can give it to whoever you want to, just don't publicly announce it just yet until we can nail down any remaining issues.
Well, I *thought* this was going to be cool. Some Linux support from a historically DOS/Windows company. I was wrong.
Let's see...I install their program, it hangs up the machine. I had to hit the RESET button! I've *never* had to do that under Linux. To be completely honest, I even had to look for that button on my case...I wasn't even sure I had it connected to the motherboard...
Fine, I start the install again and this time it goes through. I run the config tool and the machine hangs again! Unbelievable! Another liberal use of the RESET button and I'm back in.
By this time, I'm not particularly pleased with this product. The trend continues. I eventually get the stupid thing installed and I start up X. Yup, just like they promised, the behaviour was just like under Windows. I got a wavy screen and resolution support only up to 1024x768. If I wanted more, I was gonna have to edit the config file myself... Where's the benefit again? No thanks.
Plus, when I attempt to switch into full screen mode for VMWare, the f*cking thing hangs again. I decide to pitch this software out the virtual window when I next RESET(!) and reboot. Not so simple...
There is *no* uninstall program *or* instructions. What a piece of crap. So I manually back this thing out, update my own XF86Config file with what little they actually did do right (800x600 and 640x480 was nicer from their config file than mine), and I'm much happier as a result.
I will give them one thing, though. Their page says their product behaves just like the DOS/Windows counterpart. Well, that it does... With all the resets and reboots, I was quickly reminded why I switched from Windows to begin with...
Slashdot Mirror
I asked this question of the KDE team back during their interview and the response was basically that QT applications have some sort of unified printing subsystem and that's what they make use of. Well, that's great if your application is QT based, but most applications for X are not and I can only assume this includes Corel's products.
So basically my question is this. Having ported graphic-intensive applications to Linux, how do you feel the lack of a unified printing subsystem will affect Linux's viability on the desktop level? I know from personal experience that coding print support into a native X windows applications is several orders of magnitude more difficult than printing from a Windows application simply because the MFC architecture provides a nicely coupled printing subsystem built around the same architecture as the display subsystem. Do you know of a move or an architecture under X that more closely ressembles this approach and if so, how do you feel it compares? If not, how are desktop grade applications going to compete on the Linux platform when they have such a large problem to overcome individually?
And I guess on a related note, how do Corel products address this problem? I remember Wordperfect 7 for Linux included a large number of printer drivers that I assume Corel had written themselves. Do you feel that this is a reasonable approach for all applications to take? If not, what do you propose as a more general solution?
Corel seems to be billing this as support for Windows applications under Linux. This isn't quite correct. They even go so far as to say it provides support for Windows applications with no additional hardware. That's blatantly incorrect. Not only do you need additional hardware, you need a whole PC! This is nothing more than a Windows Terminal Server solution. You have to have an existing Windows PC sitting around somewhere on your network and run the applications off it. GraphOn merely "exports" the display of those applications to the Linux client. Big whoop. This isn't the problem most people are interested in having solved.
Thomas Dorris
> xvncviewer works wonderfully
You mean, xvncviewer works wonderfully SLOW. Plus, as other posters have pointed out, VNC solves a slightly different problem. It does not allow individual, multi-user application support on the client. It only provides a screen scape type interface to a Windows box. The two are very different. Furthermore, the group working on VNC does not have enough information about the Windows API to render screen updates in a reasonably efficient manner. This isn't their fault and I think what they've been able to do up to this point is amazing! I use it sometimes for my home network, but it certainly doesn't qualify as a competing product to what GraphOn claims to do.
Thomas Dorris
> Nah! People who spend 16 hours a day coding
> are just not good enough.
OK, there are two types of people that spend 16 hours a day coding. Those that are doing the work a typical person would complete in 8 hours and those that are doing the work a typical person would take 48 hours to complete. Those that fall into the former category are just pathetic and eventually get weeded out by keen management or ruthless peer pressure. Those that fall into the latter category are the ones being discussed here.
I assure you, no piece of good quality, feature rich, rock solid software was written by a group of people coding for 8 hours then going home to enjoy their "real" life every day. Complex problems require dedication to solve in a timely manner. Typically, that dedication will come at the expense of focus on other tasks.
The trick is to balance yourself so that you are not constantly being asked to focus yourself 100% of the time on software related tasks. When you have a tough problem in front of you, however, and if you're a "true" coder in the sense that you truly love the challenge and work that you do, it isn't because you have poor time management skills that you choose to sit in front of your monitor for 16 hours straight. Rather, it's because you're so dedicated to the task at hand and because you're so interested in delivering a clean and elegant solution to that problem that you've chosen to sacrifice some part of your other life to make sure that happens.
It's all about choice and the reasons behind that choice. If you choose to stay because you're behind on your workload and because you lack the skills necessary to complete a typical workload in a typical amount of time, then you suck. If you choose to stay because you're engrossed in what you're doing and you're getting a great deal of pleasure out of the progress you're making, then you're the type of person being discussed here. Trust me, it isn't just because the person has poor time management skills.
Thomas Dorris
Dork. I can't believe I'm replying to this either. The point isn't about the proper handling of infinites. Believe me, I understand the whole discussion is baseless given how silly infinites are being treated in his signature. The point is about simple algebraic substraction, assuming infinity could even be treated that way. Which, of course, it can not.
Get a clue, clueless coward boy.
Come on! Lighten up! Is this how the Linux community is going to react every time some piece of commercial software is ported to our fine OS? Cut these guys some slack! Have you ever tried to write an application as complicated as a browser? Even targetting ONE platform is immensely complex.
Yes, the rendering quarks and their time to port might suggest some slight problems in their cross-platform architecture, but geez! Software just isn't that easy, folks! Personally, I'm amazed they have it working at all...
If someone were to ask me to port some huge piece of graphic code to X-windows, I'd estimate about a year for a completion time. X ain't easy, HTML rendering ain't easy, cross platform threading ain't easy, making money off software ain't easy...and these guys are trying to do it all. So the version they're throwing out before Christmas is a little buggy. Big freaking deal. They're a small company supporting several different platforms! X and UNIX are not the most natural environments to step into.
Cut them some slack and offer some words of encouragement when a company is willing to port their software over to Linux. That's what most people want, right? Application support under Linux? Even if it's not an application you're gonna use, it's still a step in the right direction. The more companies that support Linux, the more well known and accepted out platform becomes. Before long, you have companies *assuming* they'll have to support Linux rather than asking if they should bother or not...
> Infinity
:-)
> oo = symbol for infinity
> oo = oo + 1
> oo - oo = oo - oo + 1 (6th grade math
> - subtraction postulate)
> 0 = 1 (Hmm...)
Uhhh, in my 6th grade math class, we would have gotten the following from your derivation.
oo = oo + 1
oo - oo = oo - (oo + 1)
0 = -1
Perhaps someone needs to retake 6th grade math?
Does anybody else find this weird? I mean, how well does Linux actually compare to Solaris on Sun boxes? It would seem to me that the group most capable of writing an OS for a particular platform is the group actually developing the platform itself...
Just how well can a general purpose OS like Linux really stand up against a highly optimized, well matured, platform specific (yes, I know x86 Solaris exists, but that was really an after thought), targetted OS like Solaris? Solaris has years of dedicated, well funded, talented effort poured into it *for* the Sun platform.
Personally, if I had a big ol' 4500 sitting in my cube, I'd probably *want* Solaris on it. I love Linux, but sometimes there are other choices that make a bit more sense. I'm not sure Linux on Sun machines makes sense.
AOL blocks AT&T WorldNet instant messages
Putting the whole patent silliness aside for a second, I wonder if B&N could introduce a more technically-savvy (n+1)/n-Click approach. The first click brings up a box that says "Do you wish to auto-order this item and all subsequent items?". If the user says "yes", then he is allowed to click the same button later to auto order things without the prompt. I would envision the button initially saying "2-Click", then "1.5-Click", then "1.33-Click", then "1.25-Click", etc.
:-)
That's different from the 1-Click approach in that it's prompting the user to agree to the order after the first click, but subsequent clicks are auto-ordered for them until that shipment is processed (at which time, it starts over).
This has the advantage of approaching 1-Click technology as n approaches infinity.
The bad part is that it's just as likely B&N will simply make their ordering system a "two-click" setup than fight with Amazon over a patent issue. B&N isn't in the business of proving the patent system is silly. They're in the business of selling books. If the bottom line says a fight over a patent issue isn't worth the trouble (i.e., they're not likely to loose a bunch of customers simply because they remove the one-click approach), then I bet they'll just decide to do away with one-click rather than fight it. They have nothing to gain just by proving the patent system is stupid, so they'll probably not bother.
At least that's my guess.
Those of you interested in the release of the 533Mhz K6-2...you're welcome. I *just* placed an order for the 500Mhz chip this morning. So, of course, to ensure that the things I buy are immediately outdated, AMD felt it necessary to announce the 533 model today...
Ugh. Obsolete before it even arrives...
I believe that one of the MAJOR problems facing *any* UNIX system wishing to compete on the desktop front is application level support for a printing subsystem as well as low level printer driver support. It's been a while since I've coded X-apps, but from what I recall, there was no way to "cleanly" handle print functionality. By that I mean, I always ended up with one routine to draw to the screen and a completely separate routine to write my PostScript output for printing. I believe this may still be the case give how many different print interfaces I see in various applications running under Linux. No two user interfaces are the same and no two produce similar results. To an end user (at least at the desktop level), this is extremely frustrating and it's one of the main reasons I *have* to keep Windows around. I need to print things reliably and with a high degree of quality and there's just no clean, easy way to do that under Linux or any other UNIX OS for that matter.
:-)
As for device driver support, I've used Ghostscript extensively in the past and while it's impressive, it's a FAR, FAR cry from being comparable to a vendor-supplied, Windoze-based driver equivalent with regard to quality of output and reliable printing. As an example, try printing a high resolution image to an Epson Photo 700 under Windows and then do the same under Linux using Ghostscript. The two are completely different and it's not in favor of Ghostscript.
All this leads me to my question for you guys. I use KDE along with KWM as my working environment at home. How do you see printing functionality being affected or enhanced by KDE and do you have any suggestions for how to improve upon the current state of things? Is there a huge re-write of printing support under *nix systems that I don't know about and that most applications these days are being coded to? I strongly suspect so, because there's no way in hell Linux will be able to compete in the desktop market if every application is required to write out postscript data manually and/or include printer drivers for every printer known to man. Both Windows and Java take an approach to printer support that ties printing code to display code and I believe something similar is *really* needed under Linux and/or X11. Do you guys have a feel for what the future holds with regards to printer support under *nix systems? Having coded a complete office package yourselves, I'm sure you have a pretty good idea...
You know what gets me about stories like this? It's that I have to read so many *stupid* posts made by arrogant, self-centered US citizens. I hate that it's these few people who are doing the most mouthing and getting the most attention drawn to them. It's really no wonder the rest of the world is starting to hate us. I hate those same people and I'm about as American as they come.
Please don't judge all Americans by the example set by the few that seem to do the most talking. I keep seeing posts that say things like "you Americans are all the same" or "Americans are so arrogant". Geez, come on. Stop making blanket statements like that. We're not ALL alike.
The United States of America has done a great deal for the world; that's true. However, the good ol' US of A isn't spic-n-span clean and we're FAR from self-sufficient. The world has done more for us than we have for it. Hell, the simple fact that we're only a couple hundred years old should make that point fairly obvious. Yeah, we seem to be "on top" right now, but that changes. It absolutely will change. And when it does, you better hope we have some friends still around or else the US of A will be no more.
I guess this post is making a dual plea. First, to my fellow Americans that are making all these ridiculous posts...grow up! Look around you. The "rest" of the world is a hell of a lot larger than we are; their interests and opinions are more important than ours and you better learn that. Second, to those non-US folks reading all these posts and drawing blanket conclusions about Americans...stop it! You're falling into a trap unknowingly set by these idiots. We're not all that simple minded and we're not all that hateful.
That's true, but the original poster still has a valid point even though he said "released" instead of "distributed". If companies (distributors, game makers, etc.) are going to watch Q3 sales data to determine future platform targetting plans, then the distributors really have to get the different platform versions out at the same time. Otherwise, the data is *definitely* going to be skewed. I doubt they're going to take that effect into account when they throw up the graphs of Windows vs. Linux vs. Mac sales statistics.
Doing things the way they're gonna do them (by putting Windows versions on the shelf first) is basically preloading the scales...and it's not in our favor...
Thomas Dorris
>> It's just bad business practice and it
>> hurts us all.
> Well, it doesn't hurt RSA. Monopolies,
> de-facto and otherwise, are very profitable.
I don't consider RSA a member of the set "us". I still believe their business practice has hurt "us" all. The term "us" in this case means all software developers just trying to implement a set of project requirements. There is no good reason why I HAVE to use an RSA algorithm to talk to a secure web server. There is only one reason, a very stupid one at that, that forces me to do this... RSA has bullied itself into market dominance. And until their crazy little patent expires, development on other similar algorithms has been hindered. Granted, there are plenty of other alternatives that have been developed despite RSA's position, but until most major browsers *and* servers support these alternatives, I contend that their development has been hampered greatly.
> In other words, if you're against the recent
> Amazon patent, you're against stupid patents.
> If you're against the RSA patents, you're
> against software patents.
For the record, I didn't say I was against the RSA patent; just their business practice. I believe RSA has a valid claim to their particular way of approaching encryption. I think they have every right to patent that idea. And if anyone wants to mangle data according to their specification, then they should feel obligated to pay RSA for that right. What I'm against, however, is the fact that RSA used that single, annoying little patent to stiffle deployment and, I'm sure to some extent, development of more robust, open solutions to the same problem. That's RSA's fault...not the patent office.
Thomas Dorris
> Is this just a new version of RSAREF, or what?
:-( This is very unfortunate because RSA can and will charge an arm and a leg, literally, for the privledge of using their super-cool algorithms in a commercial product. Nevermind the fact that they aren't the only game in town with it comes to cryptography.
It's RSA's implementation of their crypto algorithms. Here's an example of how one might find one's self in need of this (speaking from unfortunate experience). Let's say you wish to write a monitoring product that will submit queries to a secure web server and check that the applications being accessed are functional. In order to do this, one would need to construct a secure socket. In order to do this, one would need to implement a cipher suite that matches one of the cipher suites supported by the web server being accessed.
Non of this implies use of RSA algorithms. However, RSA has their own little monopoly thing going where the ONLY cipher suites supported by the Netscape Enterprise webserver and Microsoft's IIS make use of RSA-patented algorithms.
It's just very frustrating to be forced into a licensing agreement with a company because they hold a stanglehold on the market. There are plenty of good, FREE crypto algorithms out and about, but this doesn't matter. You can't use them because the webservers you wish to talk to don't support them. I assume RSA forced Netscape and Microsoft into some sort of exclusive arrangement that prevents them from using anything other than RSA stuff, but I don't know that for sure.
It's just bad business practice and it hurts us all.
Anyway, the BSAFE SSL-C library allows an application to make use of RSA algorithms over secure socket connections. I just wish Red Hat had also gotten a license for the SSL-J stuff as well...about 90% of my work these days is in Java. Yet another C library that I'd have to write wrappers around in Java just doesn't help me much.
Thomas Dorris
> If you aren't doing that, stop whining.
Buy a vowel, fella. He wasn't whining. He was stating a fact and offering his support in favor of Red Hat's decision. He went out of his way to be very polite in his statement of facts.
If anything, you're the one whining with your "The world does not revolve around the US" statement. Duh. If I recall correctly, the world revolves around the sun.
Thomas Dorris
I'd say Linux is still missing a commercial quality CAD program. "2D" does not a high quality CAD program make.
www.onepine.com
I checked the description of their hosting services and I see no usage cap specified...
It's OK that only 16% of the web is summarized by search engines. The other 84% is dedicated to sex sites anyway...and we all have those bookmarked by now...
My wife works for Bell Atlantic in the DC, Virginia, Maryland area. They're currently running an ADSL trial here and, of course, we wanted to sign up as "friendlies". We were denied. The reason was flatly stated that "Linux users are too technical".
BA was interested in people they could hand-hold through the process. They were not interested in having someone on their network that could "get around certain roadblocks". I'm not 100% sure what those roadblocks are, but it is apparent that at least in this area, BA's reason for not supporting Linux is that they're afraid Linux users are smarter than they are... I didn't fuss about this too much because, as it turns out, our geographical area isn't support anyway. Oh well.
I doubt they'll support the internal VSP cable modem as they (stupidly?) included a 56k *win*modem on that board... Ugh. But, of course, that assumes they don't come up with some way of actually using the winmodem under Linux.
This is from the announce file... Ooops. :-)
This is an internal release to ati-team. It is not secret or closed-source, you can give it to whoever you want to, just don't publicly announce it just yet until we can nail down any remaining issues.
Well, I *thought* this was going to be cool. Some Linux support from a historically DOS/Windows company. I was wrong.
Let's see...I install their program, it hangs up the machine. I had to hit the RESET button! I've *never* had to do that under Linux. To be completely honest, I even had to look for that button on my case...I wasn't even sure I had it connected to the motherboard...
Fine, I start the install again and this time it goes through. I run the config tool and the machine hangs again! Unbelievable! Another liberal use of the RESET button and I'm back in.
By this time, I'm not particularly pleased with this product. The trend continues. I eventually get the stupid thing installed and I start up X. Yup, just like they promised, the behaviour was just like under Windows. I got a wavy screen and resolution support only up to 1024x768. If I wanted more, I was gonna have to edit the config file myself... Where's the benefit again? No thanks.
Plus, when I attempt to switch into full screen mode for VMWare, the f*cking thing hangs again. I decide to pitch this software out the virtual window when I next RESET(!) and reboot. Not so simple...
There is *no* uninstall program *or* instructions. What a piece of crap. So I manually back this thing out, update my own XF86Config file with what little they actually did do right (800x600 and 640x480 was nicer from their config file than mine), and I'm much happier as a result.
I will give them one thing, though. Their page says their product behaves just like the DOS/Windows counterpart. Well, that it does... With all the resets and reboots, I was quickly reminded why I switched from Windows to begin with...
ThomasD