Your posts on this subject really highlight how obsolete our intellectual property laws have become. For instance, in the old days, things that could be copyrighted and things that could be patented were obviously different. But computer code seems to lie in a gray area. On the face of it, code seems to be speech, and should therefore be copyrighted. But if you think about it, code also functions like a machine. Fundamentally, programs execute almost like virtual clockwork, and therefore should be patented. So which is it? No one seems to know. Maybe we need a new category, or maybe we should radically reform the whole notion of IP. I think most/.ers would prefer the latter.;^)
I think it is clear though, that if our policy makers keep applying band-aids like the DMCA that only make the situation worse, then all IP laws will begin to lose power when almost everyone regularly violates them. I remember, about ten years ago, seeing a guy on TV (I believe he was from a think tank or something) talking about how intellectual property would be one of the most important issues our society would have to deal with in the 21st century. At the time, I thought he was crazy. I just couldn't see how ideas, and the ways they are regulated, are all that important. Man, that seems naive now.
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
Plus this gets us into the nasty scenario of there being only one way to perform a task (or onr OPTIMAL way), and then having the code for that task (or the optimal method for said task) being GPL'd.
This brings up an even larger issue: if there is something that can only be accomplished one way, and people are likely to find the solution independently, should such a thing even be copyrightable (if that's a word)?
It seems to me that the purpose of copyright is to prevent freeloaders from ruining a system. I guess I'm thinking along these lines because I've been using the gnutella network lately and there is a lot of discussion on how to keep freeloaders from ruining that system, but I digress...:-)
When looked at this way, the GPL and proprietary licenses both use copyrights to keep their respective developement systems working properly. Companies like MS charge money so they can pay their employees and shareholders, while GPL'ed projects force code users to release the code for changes or additions. Both, in their own ways, allow for the continued development of the software, while avoiding a "Tragedy of the Commons" type of situation by making freeloading difficult.
However, I think it is clear that in a situation like you have described, there is no freeloading involved, so a copyright should not apply. I'm not sure how copyright law actually works, though, so this is just speculation. I seem to remember that patents are only supposed to be granted for works that are not obvious to an expert in the field (not like this matters in practice). Perhaps copyrights work the same. Do any lawyers out there have more info?
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
Thanks for the suggestion, but I found where the problem lies. There was a bug in the original 1.6 release that prevented window resizing on the "Welcome" window, though apparently some WMs like Sawfish let you resize the window regardless of what the app says (I use IceWM by the way, though I tried WindowMaker and Enlightenment and neither of them worked either).
Anyway, the LimeWire folks released a new version today (1.6b) that fixed the problem. I downloaded that, and the problem was fixed. Simple as that.
I agree with you, LimeWire looks like a great app, and seems to run in Linux better than in Windows. I suppose I could whine about it not being free (as in speech), though I'm content to just keep my mouth shut and use it for the moment.:-)
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
You can actually get this to work on Linux? I've tried everything I can think of, and all I get is a tiny window that can't be resized. I tried doing research on the Web and Usenet, but all anyone ever talks about is how difficult it is to set up. I don't think I saw a single person who got it to run correctly.
BTW, I'm using the latest LimeWire with the latest jre on Redhat 7.1 (it was a chore just to get java functioning at all on Redhat). Has anyone solved this "tiny window" problem? I saw several others referring to it on Usenet, but no solutions.
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
I didn't mean that they need to release their source code, just completely document the interface so others can reimplement the functions that IE performs.
Actually, I believe that Ford and other auto makers already document the specs for their engines. And if they don't, a mechanic with some wrenches and a ruler could document it easily enough. As a result, there are a number of third-party replacement parts available for cars, many of them higher-quality than the originals. With integrated computers being used for more functions in cars, this may change in the not too distant future, though I hope not. I don't want to see our cars' engines turn into mysterious, sealed black boxes where no one knows exactly what is going on except the manufacturer.
Anyway, with software, figuring out what is happening is much more difficult than with spark plugs and fuel injectors. And under the DMCA, it is potentially illegal to take the software apart to see how it works. We need to have some way to prevent the entire software business from being monopolized, as will surely happen in the current climate. That is, unless Open Source/Free Software seriously increases the inroads they are making.
As for the legality of this solution, the legal system is so obfuscated and complex that I think that just about any action that a person can take will violate some law somewhere. Just read my sig for my feelings on this. In any event, this case will probably eventually make its way to the Supreme Court, who will have the ultimate authority to decide whether any particular remedy is legal. It may turn out that you are right, but not being a legal expert, I can't say.
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
Don't get me wrong, I used to work for a small computer OEM and we chafed under Microsoft's heavy-handed tactics to control how we set up the computers we sold. So much so that we tried to subvert them at every opportunity until MS finally sued us (we won the court battle).
However, I don't think that Microsoft's decision will really change anything at this point. I mean, IE is integrated into the Windows, who cares if it has an icon on the desktop, or if the icon is replaced with a Netscape/Mozilla/Opera icon? A lot of IE code starts up whether you want to run IE or not. This makes running any other browser a waste of resources. For instance, Mozilla can't beat IE's start up time unless they use the IE tactic of cheating by using the "turbo" mode. But who wants to have two browsers loaded at start up?
I think the only solution for this is for MS to completely publish the interface IE uses to talk to the rest of windows, so other software makers can reimpliment it. Then OEMs must be allowed to pull out IE and replace it with a third part browser or rendering engine.
This would actually be a design more along the lines of the Unix philosophy, where we have many small, specialized components that work together to do a job, but where there may be any number of replacements for a particular component, each with its own strengths.
I don't see this sort of thing happening without intervention by the court. Used on a wider scale, though, I think this type of solution would be better then simply breaking up MS. I believe the FSF proposed something along these lines, but I can't find a link.
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
I thought they went under not long after those massively bad chips (and National Semi bought them out). I must've been thinking of IDT. I sit corrected.:)
Yeah, National Semi bought them, and had no success with them at all. They were about to shut down Cyrix altogether, but Via stepped in and bought them. Also, Via bought IDT, and I believe the Cyrix III is actually an IDT design. It looks like Via is now marketing this chip as the Via C3, so perhaps the Cyrix brand name is dead. I've been doing some research on building a quiet/cool/low-power mini-server using one of these things. They're pretty cheap, and can use just about any socket-370 motherboard, so if it turns out to be crap I may just chuck it and put in an underclocked celeron.
By the way, the last Cyrix chip I had was a 166MHz space heater about 3-4 years ago, so I know where you're coming from.
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
It's apparently been a while since you've used a Cyrix chip. The Cyrix III series of chips supposedly run at around 5 watts and don't really need a fan, although the chip says "Heatsink/fan required". I understand performance is pretty bad, but if you don't need a top-of-the-line system this CPU could be nice to have. Anandtech has an article on this chip that is not too flattering, so I'm kind of wary about it. Does anyone have any real world experience with one of these things? I am interested in their power usage and stability (another traditional Cyrix weak point). --------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
Alas I just can't see how they can make it just selling banners.
They don't aim to just sell banners. They will be selling/customizing/configuring/supporting the Sourceforge code for companies to set up internally for use on large software projects. I imagine that most companies that need this sort of thing already have in-house solutions for it, but I can imagine that outsourcing something like this would be more cost-effective. This seems to be what VA is banking on. --------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
Redhat bought companies (like cygnus)that make money.
And VA Linux bought companies (like Andover) that don't.;-) That's why I thought it was extravagant.
Seriously though, does anyone know how much of Redhat's revenues are owed to Cygnus? There were lots of jokes about flash-in-the-pan internet companies becoming profitable by spending their IPO money on real businesses. Has Redhat actually done this? I would like to think that Redhat's business model (charge for support) has proven itself successful, but does anyone have any numbers?
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
Anyone remember when, during the big IPO craze, that lots of people were saying that VA was the Linux company most likely to succeed in the marketplace? The rationale was that VA actually sold real, physical products. Unlike, for instance, Redhat, who was spending a bunch of money on software development and then giving it away for free in the hopes that people would sign up for support.
Now, VA's hardware business is gone, and Redhat is on its way to becoming a profitable company. What happened?
I guess that, strangely enough, VA has become a victim of the success of Linux. As industry giants like IBM and Dell have jumped into the Linux business, VA has seen its market share erode, apparently to the point where it is no longer reasonable for them to continue.
It's a good thing they didn't have all their eggs in one basket. All of their purchases and investments after the IPO seemed a bit extravagant to me, but now they may be the only thing to keep the company alive. Sourceforge is a great product, and hopefully it is enough to alow VA to eke out a modest existence.
One thing is certain: that 300 dollar share price on LNUX stock a while back sure seems pretty silly now. I suppose it seemed silly even then.
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
Maybe it would be more correct to name a Linux system by its *distribution* exclusively. To an end-user, RedHat is more meaningful than GNU/Linux. It simplifies things in a certain way.
I agree with this. It's probably the most useful way to think of things. The Redhat = Linux thing seems to be fading away, thankfully. It looks like a lot of newbies nowadays are starting out with Mandrake, and people seem to understand that there are many linux distributions.
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
Funny that you bring that up. Linus originally named the project something along those lines, but the person who hosted the kernel on their FTP site decided that was a stupid name and changed it to linux. The rest, as they say, is history.
As for your reductio ad absurdum take on my previous argument, the reason the OS is named after the kernel is because the kernel is the OS. The rest are mostly user space tools that reside on top of the OS. Not that that stuff isn't important and admirable, it's just not part of the OS.
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
"Linux the system that we all know and love" is not simply the GNU system. A lot of the software that comes with a modern distribution is not related to GNU at all. For instance, XFree86, Apache, Perl, Python, KDE, etc, etc are all important to linux but were developed outside of GNU and the FSF. True, KDE is licensed under the GNU General Public License, but I think calling KDE a GNU project is ridiculous (and I'm sure the KDE developers would agree). I believe Perl is also dual-licensed Artistic and GPL, but I think you get my point.
I don't mean to diminish the contributions the GNU people have made, but I think just singling them out at the expense of other contributors, ignores the hard work of the many others who are unrelated to GNU. --------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
When was the last time you saw one that easily let you keep notes, scan images, text files, and look pudry
Why would anyone need a file manager that does these things? I thought a file manager was for managing files.
That said, I think that Nautilus really aims to be more of a file browser than a file manager. By that I mean that it seems to be for looking around at stuff using as much eye candy as possible. Actually doing any sort of filesystem maintenance is really a hassle with nautilus, especially when you are dealing with lots of files and directories.
Don't get me wrong, I like GNOME quite a bit, but I don't think nautilus is really a project that the community needs, at least not the long-term members of the community. Judging by discussions on Gnotices and the mailing lists, nautilus hasn't been very well received by the community. Maybe Nautilus will help out the newbies, but I think GNOME really needs a lightweight, highly functional file manager that still "looks purdy".
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
Actually, no, not everyone cares (at least not very much). You'll only see a negligible improvement in boot times from a faster CPU; at boot-up, the bottleneck is in the hard disk, not the CPU. As for making MP3s, in my experience the actual MP3 encoding process takes far less time than getting a nice, clean rip from the CD. Again, the bottleneck is not the CPU.
Sure, compiling and game-playing will see an improvement from a faster CPU, but I personally dont't care if a kernel takes 30 seconds less to compile, or that I can play quake at 80 fps rather than 70. I can understand that some people would care about that sort of thing, but not everyone does.
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
I haven't seen the KDE dialogs recently, but all of your suggestions sound good to me, especially the bookmarks. Also, I believe that GNOME and non-GNOME gtk apps use the same file dialog, though I may be wrong.
If the original poster is interested in this sort of thing, I think this would be a great place to start. Kind of a small project to get your feet wet, and one that would be appreciated by many, many people. There is a gnome-gui mailing list with archives available at http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-gui-list/ where one could probably get more information on how to start a project like this.
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
One thing that needs to be changed is the standard gtk file selection dialog. Man, that thing is horrible. To be fair though, I've never seen a good file selection dialog, and I'm not sure how one would go about improving something like this.
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
First of all, not all software competes for customer dollars, though, working for Microsoft, I can see how you would make this assumption.;^) There are plenty of Free Software projects that have no prospects for ever making money, but people use the software and write the code nonetheless. I think you could amend your statement to say that all software requires users, not customer dollars. Then I would agree with you.
Also, its true that adaptive radiatation will not occur when there is only one resource to exploit. However, saying that "customer dollars", (or "users") are a single resource is really a stretch. That's like saying that all organisms require an outside energy source, therefore there can be no adaptive radiation since they compete for a single resource: energy.
That is obviously untrue, though. There are many different niches and strategies for getting energy. For instance plants get their energy from the sun, herbivores get energy from the plants, and carnivores get energy from the herbivores. Then their are whole ecosystems that derive all their energy from geothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean and don't rely on the sun at all.
I hope you see my point, which I've probably belabored by now:^). All software needs users, but there are many different types of users, with many different needs. Therefore there are plenty of niches for software packages that have similar general goals, but go about things in different ways.
---------------------------
"The people. Could you patent the sun?"
I tried to read the hard core stuff. But I wasn't hard core enough:(
I would hardly call that stuff easy reading, and I have a degree in Physical Anthropology. I think the problem isn't so much that the subject matter was difficult, but that:
1. Scientists generally are not well-trained as writers.
2. They want everyone reading the article to notice how smart they are.
I think that the end result is that we have to read through the impenetrable fog of writings like this.
---------------------------
"The people. Could you patent the sun?"
;^) Sure, this is not cleaner or more intuitive than the perl example (notice, also, the lack of whitespace formatting). A lot of the debate over perl and python syntax is overblown. I think it's mostly just because advocates of either language tend to have strong feelings, but not much knowledge about how the other works.
---------------------------
"The people. Could you patent the sun?"
Hmmm... Interestingly enough, I just tried this with Mozilla.8 and the page loads with no problem. However, with today's nightly build, the freeze still occurs. Perhaps my system doesn't like something with the way the nightlies are compiled. ---------------------------
"The people. Could you patent the sun?"
In Mozilla builds for Linux for the last several weeks, I've been having problems with the browser freezing, then steadily consuming all my RAM, then my entire swap partition. If I don't kill the browser, within about 45 seconds it will cause my system to lock up. It only seems to happen on certain pages, though. For instance, this page causes the freeze for me 100% of the time. I am considering filing a bug report, but I'd like to find out if it is Mozilla or something with my system. Can anyone reproduce this problem? ---------------------------
"The people. Could you patent the sun?"
Actually, UNIX was developed by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and others at AT&T's Bell Labs. AT&T released the OS under reasonable terms in the 70's, and many universities (particularly UC Berkeley) and companies alike built on top of it. This eventually led to the many different flavors of UNIX we have today.
That said, I agree with the general sentiment of your post.
---------------------------
"The people. Could you patent the sun?"
In this article, Jim Alchen is just lying thru his teeth, no shame, nothing.
This seems to be a pattern for Allchin. You may recall that he is the one who arranged to have that doctored videotape introduced as evidence in the antitrust trial. He also lied all throughout his testimony in that trial, until David Boies ripped him to pieces in the cross-examination and forced him to admit that he had misrepresented the facts. This man is not just a liar, he should be in jail for perjury.
Slashdot Mirror
Your posts on this subject really highlight how obsolete our intellectual property laws have become. For instance, in the old days, things that could be copyrighted and things that could be patented were obviously different. But computer code seems to lie in a gray area. On the face of it, code seems to be speech, and should therefore be copyrighted. But if you think about it, code also functions like a machine. Fundamentally, programs execute almost like virtual clockwork, and therefore should be patented. So which is it? No one seems to know. Maybe we need a new category, or maybe we should radically reform the whole notion of IP. I think most /.ers would prefer the latter. ;^)
I think it is clear though, that if our policy makers keep applying band-aids like the DMCA that only make the situation worse, then all IP laws will begin to lose power when almost everyone regularly violates them. I remember, about ten years ago, seeing a guy on TV (I believe he was from a think tank or something) talking about how intellectual property would be one of the most important issues our society would have to deal with in the 21st century. At the time, I thought he was crazy. I just couldn't see how ideas, and the ways they are regulated, are all that important. Man, that seems naive now.
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
This brings up an even larger issue: if there is something that can only be accomplished one way, and people are likely to find the solution independently, should such a thing even be copyrightable (if that's a word)?
It seems to me that the purpose of copyright is to prevent freeloaders from ruining a system. I guess I'm thinking along these lines because I've been using the gnutella network lately and there is a lot of discussion on how to keep freeloaders from ruining that system, but I digress... :-)
When looked at this way, the GPL and proprietary licenses both use copyrights to keep their respective developement systems working properly. Companies like MS charge money so they can pay their employees and shareholders, while GPL'ed projects force code users to release the code for changes or additions. Both, in their own ways, allow for the continued development of the software, while avoiding a "Tragedy of the Commons" type of situation by making freeloading difficult.
However, I think it is clear that in a situation like you have described, there is no freeloading involved, so a copyright should not apply. I'm not sure how copyright law actually works, though, so this is just speculation. I seem to remember that patents are only supposed to be granted for works that are not obvious to an expert in the field (not like this matters in practice). Perhaps copyrights work the same. Do any lawyers out there have more info?
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
Thanks for the suggestion, but I found where the problem lies. There was a bug in the original 1.6 release that prevented window resizing on the "Welcome" window, though apparently some WMs like Sawfish let you resize the window regardless of what the app says (I use IceWM by the way, though I tried WindowMaker and Enlightenment and neither of them worked either).
Anyway, the LimeWire folks released a new version today (1.6b) that fixed the problem. I downloaded that, and the problem was fixed. Simple as that.
I agree with you, LimeWire looks like a great app, and seems to run in Linux better than in Windows. I suppose I could whine about it not being free (as in speech), though I'm content to just keep my mouth shut and use it for the moment. :-)
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
You can actually get this to work on Linux? I've tried everything I can think of, and all I get is a tiny window that can't be resized. I tried doing research on the Web and Usenet, but all anyone ever talks about is how difficult it is to set up. I don't think I saw a single person who got it to run correctly.
BTW, I'm using the latest LimeWire with the latest jre on Redhat 7.1 (it was a chore just to get java functioning at all on Redhat). Has anyone solved this "tiny window" problem? I saw several others referring to it on Usenet, but no solutions.
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
I didn't mean that they need to release their source code, just completely document the interface so others can reimplement the functions that IE performs.
Actually, I believe that Ford and other auto makers already document the specs for their engines. And if they don't, a mechanic with some wrenches and a ruler could document it easily enough. As a result, there are a number of third-party replacement parts available for cars, many of them higher-quality than the originals. With integrated computers being used for more functions in cars, this may change in the not too distant future, though I hope not. I don't want to see our cars' engines turn into mysterious, sealed black boxes where no one knows exactly what is going on except the manufacturer.
Anyway, with software, figuring out what is happening is much more difficult than with spark plugs and fuel injectors. And under the DMCA, it is potentially illegal to take the software apart to see how it works. We need to have some way to prevent the entire software business from being monopolized, as will surely happen in the current climate. That is, unless Open Source/Free Software seriously increases the inroads they are making.
As for the legality of this solution, the legal system is so obfuscated and complex that I think that just about any action that a person can take will violate some law somewhere. Just read my sig for my feelings on this. In any event, this case will probably eventually make its way to the Supreme Court, who will have the ultimate authority to decide whether any particular remedy is legal. It may turn out that you are right, but not being a legal expert, I can't say.
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
Don't get me wrong, I used to work for a small computer OEM and we chafed under Microsoft's heavy-handed tactics to control how we set up the computers we sold. So much so that we tried to subvert them at every opportunity until MS finally sued us (we won the court battle).
However, I don't think that Microsoft's decision will really change anything at this point. I mean, IE is integrated into the Windows, who cares if it has an icon on the desktop, or if the icon is replaced with a Netscape/Mozilla/Opera icon? A lot of IE code starts up whether you want to run IE or not. This makes running any other browser a waste of resources. For instance, Mozilla can't beat IE's start up time unless they use the IE tactic of cheating by using the "turbo" mode. But who wants to have two browsers loaded at start up?
I think the only solution for this is for MS to completely publish the interface IE uses to talk to the rest of windows, so other software makers can reimpliment it. Then OEMs must be allowed to pull out IE and replace it with a third part browser or rendering engine.
This would actually be a design more along the lines of the Unix philosophy, where we have many small, specialized components that work together to do a job, but where there may be any number of replacements for a particular component, each with its own strengths.
I don't see this sort of thing happening without intervention by the court. Used on a wider scale, though, I think this type of solution would be better then simply breaking up MS. I believe the FSF proposed something along these lines, but I can't find a link.
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
Yeah, National Semi bought them, and had no success with them at all. They were about to shut down Cyrix altogether, but Via stepped in and bought them. Also, Via bought IDT, and I believe the Cyrix III is actually an IDT design. It looks like Via is now marketing this chip as the Via C3, so perhaps the Cyrix brand name is dead. I've been doing some research on building a quiet/cool/low-power mini-server using one of these things. They're pretty cheap, and can use just about any socket-370 motherboard, so if it turns out to be crap I may just chuck it and put in an underclocked celeron.
By the way, the last Cyrix chip I had was a 166MHz space heater about 3-4 years ago, so I know where you're coming from.
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
It's apparently been a while since you've used a Cyrix chip. The Cyrix III series of chips supposedly run at around 5 watts and don't really need a fan, although the chip says "Heatsink/fan required". I understand performance is pretty bad, but if you don't need a top-of-the-line system this CPU could be nice to have. Anandtech has an article on this chip that is not too flattering, so I'm kind of wary about it. Does anyone have any real world experience with one of these things? I am interested in their power usage and stability (another traditional Cyrix weak point).
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
And VA Linux bought companies (like Andover) that don't. ;-) That's why I thought it was extravagant.
Seriously though, does anyone know how much of Redhat's revenues are owed to Cygnus? There were lots of jokes about flash-in-the-pan internet companies becoming profitable by spending their IPO money on real businesses. Has Redhat actually done this? I would like to think that Redhat's business model (charge for support) has proven itself successful, but does anyone have any numbers?
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
Anyone remember when, during the big IPO craze, that lots of people were saying that VA was the Linux company most likely to succeed in the marketplace? The rationale was that VA actually sold real, physical products. Unlike, for instance, Redhat, who was spending a bunch of money on software development and then giving it away for free in the hopes that people would sign up for support.
Now, VA's hardware business is gone, and Redhat is on its way to becoming a profitable company. What happened?
I guess that, strangely enough, VA has become a victim of the success of Linux. As industry giants like IBM and Dell have jumped into the Linux business, VA has seen its market share erode, apparently to the point where it is no longer reasonable for them to continue.
It's a good thing they didn't have all their eggs in one basket. All of their purchases and investments after the IPO seemed a bit extravagant to me, but now they may be the only thing to keep the company alive. Sourceforge is a great product, and hopefully it is enough to alow VA to eke out a modest existence.
One thing is certain: that 300 dollar share price on LNUX stock a while back sure seems pretty silly now. I suppose it seemed silly even then.
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
I agree with this. It's probably the most useful way to think of things. The Redhat = Linux thing seems to be fading away, thankfully. It looks like a lot of newbies nowadays are starting out with Mandrake, and people seem to understand that there are many linux distributions.
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
Funny that you bring that up. Linus originally named the project something along those lines, but the person who hosted the kernel on their FTP site decided that was a stupid name and changed it to linux. The rest, as they say, is history.
As for your reductio ad absurdum take on my previous argument, the reason the OS is named after the kernel is because the kernel is the OS. The rest are mostly user space tools that reside on top of the OS. Not that that stuff isn't important and admirable, it's just not part of the OS.
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
"Linux the system that we all know and love" is not simply the GNU system. A lot of the software that comes with a modern distribution is not related to GNU at all. For instance, XFree86, Apache, Perl, Python, KDE, etc, etc are all important to linux but were developed outside of GNU and the FSF. True, KDE is licensed under the GNU General Public License, but I think calling KDE a GNU project is ridiculous (and I'm sure the KDE developers would agree). I believe Perl is also dual-licensed Artistic and GPL, but I think you get my point.
I don't mean to diminish the contributions the GNU people have made, but I think just singling them out at the expense of other contributors, ignores the hard work of the many others who are unrelated to GNU.
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
Why would anyone need a file manager that does these things? I thought a file manager was for managing files.
That said, I think that Nautilus really aims to be more of a file browser than a file manager. By that I mean that it seems to be for looking around at stuff using as much eye candy as possible. Actually doing any sort of filesystem maintenance is really a hassle with nautilus, especially when you are dealing with lots of files and directories.
Don't get me wrong, I like GNOME quite a bit, but I don't think nautilus is really a project that the community needs, at least not the long-term members of the community. Judging by discussions on Gnotices and the mailing lists, nautilus hasn't been very well received by the community. Maybe Nautilus will help out the newbies, but I think GNOME really needs a lightweight, highly functional file manager that still "looks purdy".
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
Actually, no, not everyone cares (at least not very much). You'll only see a negligible improvement in boot times from a faster CPU; at boot-up, the bottleneck is in the hard disk, not the CPU. As for making MP3s, in my experience the actual MP3 encoding process takes far less time than getting a nice, clean rip from the CD. Again, the bottleneck is not the CPU.
Sure, compiling and game-playing will see an improvement from a faster CPU, but I personally dont't care if a kernel takes 30 seconds less to compile, or that I can play quake at 80 fps rather than 70. I can understand that some people would care about that sort of thing, but not everyone does.
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
I haven't seen the KDE dialogs recently, but all of your suggestions sound good to me, especially the bookmarks. Also, I believe that GNOME and non-GNOME gtk apps use the same file dialog, though I may be wrong.
If the original poster is interested in this sort of thing, I think this would be a great place to start. Kind of a small project to get your feet wet, and one that would be appreciated by many, many people. There is a gnome-gui mailing list with archives available at http://mail.gnome.org/archives/gnome-gui-list/ where one could probably get more information on how to start a project like this.
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
One thing that needs to be changed is the standard gtk file selection dialog. Man, that thing is horrible. To be fair though, I've never seen a good file selection dialog, and I'm not sure how one would go about improving something like this.
--------------------------
"Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it."
Your analysis has some problems as well.
First of all, not all software competes for customer dollars, though, working for Microsoft, I can see how you would make this assumption. ;^) There are plenty of Free Software projects that have no prospects for ever making money, but people use the software and write the code nonetheless. I think you could amend your statement to say that all software requires users, not customer dollars. Then I would agree with you.
Also, its true that adaptive radiatation will not occur when there is only one resource to exploit. However, saying that "customer dollars", (or "users") are a single resource is really a stretch. That's like saying that all organisms require an outside energy source, therefore there can be no adaptive radiation since they compete for a single resource: energy.
That is obviously untrue, though. There are many different niches and strategies for getting energy. For instance plants get their energy from the sun, herbivores get energy from the plants, and carnivores get energy from the herbivores. Then their are whole ecosystems that derive all their energy from geothermal vents at the bottom of the ocean and don't rely on the sun at all.
I hope you see my point, which I've probably belabored by now :^). All software needs users, but there are many different types of users, with many different needs. Therefore there are plenty of niches for software packages that have similar general goals, but go about things in different ways.
---------------------------
"The people. Could you patent the sun?"
1. Scientists generally are not well-trained as writers.
2. They want everyone reading the article to notice how smart they are.
I think that the end result is that we have to read through the impenetrable fog of writings like this.
---------------------------
"The people. Could you patent the sun?"
while 1: print 'Perl sucks!'
---------------------------
"The people. Could you patent the sun?"
Hmmm... Interestingly enough, I just tried this with Mozilla .8 and the page loads with no problem. However, with today's nightly build, the freeze still occurs. Perhaps my system doesn't like something with the way the nightlies are compiled.
---------------------------
"The people. Could you patent the sun?"
In Mozilla builds for Linux for the last several weeks, I've been having problems with the browser freezing, then steadily consuming all my RAM, then my entire swap partition. If I don't kill the browser, within about 45 seconds it will cause my system to lock up. It only seems to happen on certain pages, though. For instance, this page causes the freeze for me 100% of the time. I am considering filing a bug report, but I'd like to find out if it is Mozilla or something with my system. Can anyone reproduce this problem?
---------------------------
"The people. Could you patent the sun?"
Actually, UNIX was developed by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie and others at AT&T's Bell Labs. AT&T released the OS under reasonable terms in the 70's, and many universities (particularly UC Berkeley) and companies alike built on top of it. This eventually led to the many different flavors of UNIX we have today.
That said, I agree with the general sentiment of your post.
---------------------------
"The people. Could you patent the sun?"
This seems to be a pattern for Allchin. You may recall that he is the one who arranged to have that doctored videotape introduced as evidence in the antitrust trial. He also lied all throughout his testimony in that trial, until David Boies ripped him to pieces in the cross-examination and forced him to admit that he had misrepresented the facts. This man is not just a liar, he should be in jail for perjury.
This link has a little more information.
---------------------------
"The people. Could you patent the sun?"