It's my take here that Mr. Coates' motives in this could be very personal. The article states that he owns 3,005,440 shares of Inprise and if Corel's previous acquisition record is to be applied here then those shares could be worth very little in a year or two.
Corel has a strong history of losing to Microsoft in any area in which it decides to go head to head. Probably Mr. Coates believes that his, and his company's interests are best served not in a turf war with Microsoft, but by servicing both camps with much needed multi platform development tools (Borland) and application architechtures (Visigenic).
I still find it kind of odd that Linux people are really getting into the convention thing like every other area of computing. Does Linux, being almost entirely developed by people working seperately and communicating instantaneously still make it seem useful to all get together in some warehouse for a couple days and get free pamphlets?
I do not doubt the social reasons for these things, it's great to meet the people you yell at on Usenet, I just wonder as to what some groups are now touting as the business usefulness of these conferences.
I would agree that it's always going to be good to have the config files just be plain text editable. Build the GUIs on top of that. Perhaps the XML format idea being tossed about is worth a look, it seems to be the best of both worlds.
Cut and Paste, perhaps a bad example. I'm so used to the Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V combo now I think I make alot of mistakes because of that. However, there should be a standard KEY stroke for cut paste in Linux. In Netscape its Alt-C, Alt-V. Everywhere else, its select then middle mouse button (which can be good and bad). I just want things to be consistent in terms of look and feel across applications in a specific window manager. It really helps in learning a new program quickly. By the way, I love the new Sawmill window manager for Gnome. It's probably the first GUI I prefer over Windows.
I guess my final point could be misinterpreted. First, I don't think anyone is claiming that the Linux kernel is anything but super-solid. However, as we get further and further away from that things seem to get more and more unstable. Some examples in terms of just handy utilities that are fairly solid elsewhere: GnomeICU (much better with new release), Gnome-napster, KV-Irc (or whatever its called), and some others. True, the older a project gets (given that it is popular), the more stable it gets in general. However, that is not guaranteed as the effort still has to be put in to find what are probably really boring problems with a program. Just because something goes open source doesn't mean they'll be any useful development.
As for compiling goes, yup its super useful if you know whats going on, and yup binary packages are really common nowadays. Alot of the time though, you are expected to be able to recompile to fix any problems.
Ahh its all tradeoffs anyway right? I love alot of these advantages and accept the complexity that comes with them. I'd love to see the two goals of configurability and ease of use both be achieved.
KDE and Gnome are easier to use. If Linux truely wants to be on the average desktop there has to be at least these simple issues addressed:
1. Interface consistency. 2. GUI configuration of system. 3. Target audience for most apps.
Now a brief expansion (coming from a semi-new Linux user, long time computer user):
1. First, it is fine to have different window managers. Just make them at least independently consistent. The obvious example - cut and paste, different in every situation and exteremely frustrating and inefficient. 2. There have been important strides in this area in a very short period of time, but the common advice is: "Edit the scripts, who knows what [utility] will do to them." This is no good. 3. Linux developers target their apps for a Linux Savvy audience. Bugs are expected, bad interfaces with nasty widgets are expected and in most cases a compile is expected. Most computer users don't know what "compile" means. Package managers help alot, it sure helped me, but it won't help the guy deciding on whether to get that iMac or not.
Linux can be on the desktop, but does it want to be? It's really up to all of us I guess, and as soon as its not and its up to Corel or RedHat or something, then its probably not worth pushing Linux anymore.
For Linux to really get onto the desktop, everyone agrees that you need to have a great office suite that is interoperable with MS Office, a good browser, a nice windowing system, etc. When we look at the progress made, all those major points are well under way or in hand, yet the instantaneous transition of the user base to Linux has yet to happen, for the desktop at least.
Why? Because its still insanely hard to use. I don't know why I feel I need to worry about this being called flamebait or whatever on here, but I really believe its the truth. Lurking right underneath the beautiful levels of window managers we always see screenshots for is the world of rc.d scripts, ifconfig, nfs and all the other stuff.
I know computers pretty well and its taken me weeks to get at all proficient in Linux, and just the other night I couldn't get the damn floppy disk to unmount and I had no idea why!
My idea: Let's each work to make Linux the best tool for their area of need and let others worry about whether its worth it for them to adopt. At some point it will, but guessing what the average user wants is not going to get us closer to being on the computer in the living room.
Please comment, I'd love to hear other strategies.
"...researchers announced that the new sophisticated chips could be on the market as early as next year and would have a wider range of more powerful flavours. The Sour cream and onion variety will be released at 9x its original flavour, while BBQ should be over 11x. Researchers say that the flavour multiple should increase rapidly as they move to a 0.1 mm ruffle process.
Hostess' law states that flavour will double every 18 months while number of chips in a bag will half. Researchers have been worried lately that they may have been reaching the physical limits of flavour packing, but these newly announced bionic technologies should allow for further improvements."
It seems that in the simplest configuration you do not need either the Gateway or the Access thing. Read here for some info, along with a link to a pretty large PDF which is the user manual for the WaveLan PCI card.
A good point, I remember back in I think '97 when there were some chips in development to do just that, I believe Motorola and IBM were the two major proponents, but I could be wrong.
However, this example only illustrates the truism that any resources directed at specific hardware implementations would be better off being directed at making a general CPU faster. These chips don't exist today because Intel and AMD have pushed the envelope so far that they just aren't necessary, or couldn't keep up.
(For the record, I am a Java programmer so this isn't an anti-Java bias speaking).
Ahh, the Russians have had these capabilities for years, its called "clay pottery" and involves the realtime molding of clay by a team of russians who hide behind your monitor.
The U.S. could have had this working long ago if they hadn't cut their spending on high speed kiln research.
If sun really wanted to get Java multi-platform they would get the following straight:
1. Built in support for every major Linux distribution. 2. Automatic or at least automated update of the JVM on your system to the latest stable version. By components hopefully as the whole thing is a little big. 3. Finish the damn Java plug-in for browsers. No one wants to include Java in their browser anymore, so just finish that Java runtime as a plug-in deal and get it out there.
Then we could have some serious open source Java projects for Linux and I could finally start contributing...
They went to all the trouble of having this thing online, but the bridesmaids' dresses still looked bad and Uncle Frank still got drunk and said something inappropriate about the bride's "knockers."
Why is it whenever you get family together, no matter where you are they misbehave?
A least the photo's weren't as expensive - *PrintScreen*.
The subject of this message refers not to the news item, but to the non-stop and ever inceasing volume of ctiticism from message posters leveled at every kind of topic posted.
"Less personal info. Less legal stuff. Less stuff about commercial software. Less opinion pieces from [whoever]."
What are we left with? A bunch of dry news items about kernel releases and KDE upgrades. I much prefer the occasional personal piece from our online friends, or the occasional humourous new topic.
If you are posting a message on here complaining about the signal/noise ratio on Slashdot, think it over first. You are about to become the noise, not the signal.
I honestly think that these sorts of beliefs hold back the acceptance of computing into the areas where it could be used in the most interesting ways, i.e. by people who may not understand computers.
Sure TCP/IP is complicated. So is a Pentium chip, I don't know how superpipelining works and I use the thing just fine. There are a zillion examples of this in technology - compexity made usable. Unfortunately we haven't mastered it in computing yet.
When we do, and giving up the idea that our area of specialization is just too complex for anyone to simplify is the first step, then I think we'll really be making some progress.
Thank god somebody finally pointed out that not everyone here is qualified to make the sort of off the cuff remarks about issues being "obviously" one way or the other.
There's nothing wrong with stating your opinion on an open forum, but all to often on here it starts sounding like a Papal decree or a state of the union address.
A question: because of the Crusoe code morphing technology does this mean that we could program it to translate Java byte code into the Crusoe VLIW instruction set and get a hardware speed JVM? That would be sweet...
So now that mobile Linux has been demoed to the world, when is Linus going to release the source? I didn't hear any mention of it during the webcast (although I had to leave part way through). And I guess the other question is, is this a kernel fork in progress, or is it a common kernel with what we've been seeing in development right now?
What the RIAA is saying makes sense, if you accept their business model as the only way to distribute recorded material for profit.
The kind of personal digital control that people are regaining over the mediums that surround them is forcing certain industries to take a hard look at what it is they sell. Does the RIAA promote the sale of plastic discs in colourful cases, or do they sell music?
Once they stop fighting for the things that they sell, rather than the ideas that they sell then they can start focusing on a business model that works.
As far as I'm concerned, the cat is out of the bag as far as digital distribution goes. The RIAA can spend its last remaining years of importance fighting to put it back in, or it can find a better way to do things.
This is the danger of anti-trust law and the seemingly logical arguments that support those laws. I don't mean to say that you're wrong, because these issues are notoriously slippery, I mean to say that it is by no means this simple.
Your argument is that there is a significant barrier to entry into the market and that competitors cannot easily begin to compete because of this barrier.
My point would be that there is a significant barrier to entry into every market, otherwise I'd be in them all. Your related point that it would take a not trivial amount of money to begin competing also doesn't make sense, as if there is enough profit to be made then the appropriate investment is justified.
My point is, that monopoly or no as a company's performance begins to suck then the money to be made will outweigh the cost of entry, otherwise its not worth entering the market at all.
See Bionomics by Micheal Rothschild for where I get all my ideas.
Its not a coincidence that this retraction comes just hours after a large number of work at home Slashdot readers started filing for damages due to Linux "research" involving the latest Playboy issue.
I don't think anyone really can know the lasting trauma of a poorly placed papercut till it happens to a sensitive area.
So from reading the article it seems that we've lost a site that sells tennis balls that go on your car antenna, and a meeting place for celtic musicians.
I don't know about you, but that sounds like acceptable losses to me. You know the old saying, if you're gonna make an omlette, you've gotta break a couple tennis balls.
"I know we all go on about only reading the articles, but did you see that [insert unattractive Linux celeb here] centerfold!? Oh my god, check out the [disk array/mouse pad/beowulf cluster] on that one!"
There ya go, now you don't need to read the rest of the posts.
Hey guys, it looks like this problem is everywhere. My grandmother just put up a site to show her recipes for cookies that she gives to orphans. Not only that, the damn site doesn't support Netscape 2.x OR Quicken for Windows 3.11!
Dudes its time for some serious hacking. Get her.
I've also got some rumours of a Lisa Loeb fan page that won't let any small mouth bass view the site. That's only a rumour right now though, let's not get all worked up over nothing.
Ok there Mr. NC tax collector, let's take a look at what I bought this online year:
Guns & Ammo subscription 7 pounds, nitro glycerine 3000 rounds, armour piercing 50 mm rounds 2 kilos, weapons grade plutonium
Thats about it, so did you want me to send in the cheque, or are you going to send some nice people around to collect it? Yeah, ok I thought you might be sending someone...
Slashdot Mirror
It's my take here that Mr. Coates' motives in this could be very personal. The article states that he owns 3,005,440 shares of Inprise and if Corel's previous acquisition record is to be applied here then those shares could be worth very little in a year or two.
Corel has a strong history of losing to Microsoft in any area in which it decides to go head to head. Probably Mr. Coates believes that his, and his company's interests are best served not in a turf war with Microsoft, but by servicing both camps with much needed multi platform development tools (Borland) and application architechtures (Visigenic).
Hotnutz.com - Funny
I still find it kind of odd that Linux people are really getting into the convention thing like every other area of computing. Does Linux, being almost entirely developed by people working seperately and communicating instantaneously still make it seem useful to all get together in some warehouse for a couple days and get free pamphlets?
I do not doubt the social reasons for these things, it's great to meet the people you yell at on Usenet, I just wonder as to what some groups are now touting as the business usefulness of these conferences.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
Yup, excellent points there.
I would agree that it's always going to be good to have the config files just be plain text editable. Build the GUIs on top of that. Perhaps the XML format idea being tossed about is worth a look, it seems to be the best of both worlds.
Cut and Paste, perhaps a bad example. I'm so used to the Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V combo now I think I make alot of mistakes because of that. However, there should be a standard KEY stroke for cut paste in Linux. In Netscape its Alt-C, Alt-V. Everywhere else, its select then middle mouse button (which can be good and bad). I just want things to be consistent in terms of look and feel across applications in a specific window manager. It really helps in learning a new program quickly. By the way, I love the new Sawmill window manager for Gnome. It's probably the first GUI I prefer over Windows.
I guess my final point could be misinterpreted. First, I don't think anyone is claiming that the Linux kernel is anything but super-solid. However, as we get further and further away from that things seem to get more and more unstable. Some examples in terms of just handy utilities that are fairly solid elsewhere: GnomeICU (much better with new release), Gnome-napster, KV-Irc (or whatever its called), and some others. True, the older a project gets (given that it is popular), the more stable it gets in general. However, that is not guaranteed as the effort still has to be put in to find what are probably really boring problems with a program. Just because something goes open source doesn't mean they'll be any useful development.
As for compiling goes, yup its super useful if you know whats going on, and yup binary packages are really common nowadays. Alot of the time though, you are expected to be able to recompile to fix any problems.
Ahh its all tradeoffs anyway right? I love alot of these advantages and accept the complexity that comes with them. I'd love to see the two goals of configurability and ease of use both be achieved.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
Linux is not easy to use.
KDE and Gnome are easier to use. If Linux truely wants to be on the average desktop there has to be at least these simple issues addressed:
1. Interface consistency.
2. GUI configuration of system.
3. Target audience for most apps.
Now a brief expansion (coming from a semi-new Linux user, long time computer user):
1. First, it is fine to have different window managers. Just make them at least independently consistent. The obvious example - cut and paste, different in every situation and exteremely frustrating and inefficient.
2. There have been important strides in this area in a very short period of time, but the common advice is: "Edit the scripts, who knows what [utility] will do to them." This is no good.
3. Linux developers target their apps for a Linux Savvy audience. Bugs are expected, bad interfaces with nasty widgets are expected and in most cases a compile is expected. Most computer users don't know what "compile" means. Package managers help alot, it sure helped me, but it won't help the guy deciding on whether to get that iMac or not.
Linux can be on the desktop, but does it want to be? It's really up to all of us I guess, and as soon as its not and its up to Corel or RedHat or something, then its probably not worth pushing Linux anymore.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
For Linux to really get onto the desktop, everyone agrees that you need to have a great office suite that is interoperable with MS Office, a good browser, a nice windowing system, etc. When we look at the progress made, all those major points are well under way or in hand, yet the instantaneous transition of the user base to Linux has yet to happen, for the desktop at least.
Why? Because its still insanely hard to use. I don't know why I feel I need to worry about this being called flamebait or whatever on here, but I really believe its the truth. Lurking right underneath the beautiful levels of window managers we always see screenshots for is the world of rc.d scripts, ifconfig, nfs and all the other stuff.
I know computers pretty well and its taken me weeks to get at all proficient in Linux, and just the other night I couldn't get the damn floppy disk to unmount and I had no idea why!
My idea: Let's each work to make Linux the best tool for their area of need and let others worry about whether its worth it for them to adopt. At some point it will, but guessing what the average user wants is not going to get us closer to being on the computer in the living room.
Please comment, I'd love to hear other strategies.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
"...researchers announced that the new sophisticated chips could be on the market as early as next year and would have a wider range of more powerful flavours. The Sour cream and onion variety will be released at 9x its original flavour, while BBQ should be over 11x. Researchers say that the flavour multiple should increase rapidly as they move to a 0.1 mm ruffle process.
Hostess' law states that flavour will double every 18 months while number of chips in a bag will half. Researchers have been worried lately that they may have been reaching the physical limits of flavour packing, but these newly announced bionic technologies should allow for further improvements."
Hotnutz.com - Funny
It seems that in the simplest configuration you do not need either the Gateway or the Access thing. Read here for some info, along with a link to a pretty large PDF which is the user manual for the WaveLan PCI card.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
A good point, I remember back in I think '97 when there were some chips in development to do just that, I believe Motorola and IBM were the two major proponents, but I could be wrong.
However, this example only illustrates the truism that any resources directed at specific hardware implementations would be better off being directed at making a general CPU faster. These chips don't exist today because Intel and AMD have pushed the envelope so far that they just aren't necessary, or couldn't keep up.
(For the record, I am a Java programmer so this isn't an anti-Java bias speaking).
Hotnutz.com - Funny
Related to all of this: does anyone have any idea when the source to the new "Mobile Linux" code that Linux developed will be released?
Because its based on Linux, the GPL says they do need to release it right?
Hotnutz.com - Funny
Ahh, the Russians have had these capabilities for years, its called "clay pottery" and involves the realtime molding of clay by a team of russians who hide behind your monitor.
The U.S. could have had this working long ago if they hadn't cut their spending on high speed kiln research.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
If sun really wanted to get Java multi-platform they would get the following straight:
1. Built in support for every major Linux distribution.
2. Automatic or at least automated update of the JVM on your system to the latest stable version. By components hopefully as the whole thing is a little big.
3. Finish the damn Java plug-in for browsers. No one wants to include Java in their browser anymore, so just finish that Java runtime as a plug-in deal and get it out there.
Then we could have some serious open source Java projects for Linux and I could finally start contributing...
Hotnutz.com - Funny
They went to all the trouble of having this thing online, but the bridesmaids' dresses still looked bad and Uncle Frank still got drunk and said something inappropriate about the bride's "knockers."
Why is it whenever you get family together, no matter where you are they misbehave?
A least the photo's weren't as expensive - *PrintScreen*.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
I would recommend that this item not be sold to the President, who knows where he'll try to stick it.
Hotnutz.com - Funny
The subject of this message refers not to the news item, but to the non-stop and ever inceasing volume of ctiticism from message posters leveled at every kind of topic posted.
"Less personal info. Less legal stuff. Less stuff about commercial software. Less opinion pieces from [whoever]."
What are we left with? A bunch of dry news items about kernel releases and KDE upgrades. I much prefer the occasional personal piece from our online friends, or the occasional humourous new topic.
If you are posting a message on here complaining about the signal/noise ratio on Slashdot, think it over first. You are about to become the noise, not the signal.
Hotnutz.com
I honestly think that these sorts of beliefs hold back the acceptance of computing into the areas where it could be used in the most interesting ways, i.e. by people who may not understand computers.
Sure TCP/IP is complicated. So is a Pentium chip, I don't know how superpipelining works and I use the thing just fine. There are a zillion examples of this in technology - compexity made usable. Unfortunately we haven't mastered it in computing yet.
When we do, and giving up the idea that our area of specialization is just too complex for anyone to simplify is the first step, then I think we'll really be making some progress.
Hotnutz.com
Thank god somebody finally pointed out that not everyone here is qualified to make the sort of off the cuff remarks about issues being "obviously" one way or the other.
There's nothing wrong with stating your opinion on an open forum, but all to often on here it starts sounding like a Papal decree or a state of the union address.
More humilty, less vitriol!
Hotnutz.com
A question: because of the Crusoe code morphing technology does this mean that we could program it to translate Java byte code into the Crusoe VLIW instruction set and get a hardware speed JVM? That would be sweet...
Hotnutz.com
So now that mobile Linux has been demoed to the world, when is Linus going to release the source? I didn't hear any mention of it during the webcast (although I had to leave part way through). And I guess the other question is, is this a kernel fork in progress, or is it a common kernel with what we've been seeing in development right now?
Hotnutz.com
What the RIAA is saying makes sense, if you accept their business model as the only way to distribute recorded material for profit.
The kind of personal digital control that people are regaining over the mediums that surround them is forcing certain industries to take a hard look at what it is they sell. Does the RIAA promote the sale of plastic discs in colourful cases, or do they sell music?
Once they stop fighting for the things that they sell, rather than the ideas that they sell then they can start focusing on a business model that works.
As far as I'm concerned, the cat is out of the bag as far as digital distribution goes. The RIAA can spend its last remaining years of importance fighting to put it back in, or it can find a better way to do things.
Hotnutz.com
This is the danger of anti-trust law and the seemingly logical arguments that support those laws. I don't mean to say that you're wrong, because these issues are notoriously slippery, I mean to say that it is by no means this simple.
Your argument is that there is a significant barrier to entry into the market and that competitors cannot easily begin to compete because of this barrier.
My point would be that there is a significant barrier to entry into every market, otherwise I'd be in them all. Your related point that it would take a not trivial amount of money to begin competing also doesn't make sense, as if there is enough profit to be made then the appropriate investment is justified.
My point is, that monopoly or no as a company's performance begins to suck then the money to be made will outweigh the cost of entry, otherwise its not worth entering the market at all.
See Bionomics by Micheal Rothschild for where I get all my ideas.
Hotnutz.com
Its not a coincidence that this retraction comes just hours after a large number of work at home Slashdot readers started filing for damages due to Linux "research" involving the latest Playboy issue.
I don't think anyone really can know the lasting trauma of a poorly placed papercut till it happens to a sensitive area.
Hotnutz.com
So from reading the article it seems that we've lost a site that sells tennis balls that go on your car antenna, and a meeting place for celtic musicians.
I don't know about you, but that sounds like acceptable losses to me. You know the old saying, if you're gonna make an omlette, you've gotta break a couple tennis balls.
Hotnutz.com
[Make your own joke about Linux in Playboy]
"I know we all go on about only reading the articles, but did you see that [insert unattractive Linux celeb here] centerfold!? Oh my god, check out the [disk array/mouse pad/beowulf cluster] on that one!"
There ya go, now you don't need to read the rest of the posts.
Hotnutz.com
Hey guys, it looks like this problem is everywhere. My grandmother just put up a site to show her recipes for cookies that she gives to orphans. Not only that, the damn site doesn't support Netscape 2.x OR Quicken for Windows 3.11!
Dudes its time for some serious hacking. Get her.
I've also got some rumours of a Lisa Loeb fan page that won't let any small mouth bass view the site. That's only a rumour right now though, let's not get all worked up over nothing.
Hotnutz.com
Ok there Mr. NC tax collector, let's take a look at what I bought this online year:
Guns & Ammo subscription
7 pounds, nitro glycerine
3000 rounds, armour piercing 50 mm rounds
2 kilos, weapons grade plutonium
Thats about it, so did you want me to send in the cheque, or are you going to send some nice people around to collect it? Yeah, ok I thought you might be sending someone...
Hotnutz.com