Holy crap batman, it's scorched earth... but in 3d. All of the old weapons are there, as is the collab play. It even plays like the old game, mostly. Now I have to convince some ppl to install tonight, and I'll kick their collective asses.
I remember looking at this project a year ago, and it was closed (afair), and not very far along. But now...
It relies on 3d accell (read binary NV drivers for X folk), WxWindows, and SDL, but it builds on my two recent systems fine. It runs well at 1280x1024@24 on my P3-667 + NV G4mx.
Does anybody remember tools like STOS? STOS was a basic-language and dev environment for the Atari ST . You could put a game together in a few hours, including sprites, music. It was as simple as the basic-shells of the 8-bit days, simple enough for a 10 year old to build a game in a weekend.
I can still pull out my ST and whip a game together with that tool. The only thing that comes close today is Python + pygame (or perl + sdl)... but they lack the integrated tools (sprite editor, score editor, map editor). A toolset on top of python + pygame would rock.
From Canada, of course. And that's $15 Canadian, which is abou $11USD. Two national chains here (A&B, FutureShop) have stuck it to the recording industry by ignoring fixed pricing (for several years now).
The Advogato has discussed xml evils at least once. There are more rants in the user journals if you've got time to search.
XML is just a text markup - a very verbose, flexible one at that. It's not much different than a good hammer. Great tool for pounding nails... but not everything is a nail...
Haha ah haha... Oh, wait... that wasn't intentionally funny.
Personal preference of coding style does not define good vs. bad code. Quality is defined by consistent attention to detail, where those details are related to correctness, robustness, efficiency, security, etc.
In my years of coding, I've been mistaken in thinking there was ONE TRUE WAY in terms of coding style. I was wrong, and so are you. Style is only perpheral to other *important* qualities in software.
Is concerning to see the multitude of anti-Freedom directives produced in these last few years...
Re:The future of money is already here...
on
The Future of Money
·
· Score: 1
Here in western Canada, we've been able to use our debit cards at Burger King's and McDicks for almost 10 years. These days, pizza delivery dudes bring their hand-held debit machines to your door... and every mom-n-pop shop has one. Stores advertise if they/dont/ take debit, and it is a rare site indeed.
Funny thing actually... my wife won a gag-gift (haha) - a soft-porn book printed on waterproof paper - at her xmas party. No great suprise really, pr0n is a leader in new technologies...
Re:For those of you on the West Coast...
on
Step 2, Groceries
·
· Score: 1
Also on the West coast of Canada is Quality Foods, who have been delivering groceries for at least a few years: QF online... with shipping charges of CAD$9.95 (~USD$6.50). They have over 10k items in their online store.
They even deliver goods from B.C. liquor stores, which is a new service for our Province (we have rather draconian liquor laws here in western Canada).
This is a load of crap: no one needs commercial software. Evolution is similar to Outlook - but certainly not a copy. In nearly every way, Evolution is better - and it's not like Outlook is innovative. Outlook is a very obvious approach to mail that just happened to be pushed down our throats.
I'm not sure if you remember Eudora - which would have certainly grown into something as good as Outlook... but we never found out, as Microsoft pre-installed Outlook express on every desktop in the universe. Eudora didn't even have a chance... same with Netscape, etc. Exactly where is the innovation in that?
Microsoft shoved Outlook on us too: bundling with Office. Exactly how likely is anyone to choose something outside of what their IT department uses? There is so little choice in it all.
Worse, Outlook is stagnant. When was the last time Outlook received a new feature? I've not seen any significant change in it since it's first release, almost 6 years ago. This too is innovation?
On the other hand, Evolution implements a very standard mail interface - and does it with flair. Sure, it looks like Outlook, but it's not just a dumb copy. Every feature packed into Evolultion is thought out (not just copied), and improved. Single click message highlighting? Not in Outlook. VFolders? Not in outlook. Search bar? Not in Outlook. Configurable 'start' page? Not in Outlook. Standard - did you read that? - a standard mailbox format. Not in Outlook. Image blocking? Not in Outlook.
I fail to see exactly why we need Microsoft. Maybe it's the blind-eye to security. Or maybe it's the extend and extinguish bulldozing of all competition. Or maybe it's the frequent feature additions. Or perhaps it's the great mail handling or standards adherance. Or, maybe not. I'll live fine without Microsoft.
Have a look at sourceforge sometime and you'll agree that things are spread too thin. Lots of projects that have never even released any files. Focus on making what's working now better instead of coming up with another new project will help us all.
Too thin? Unfinished projects has little to do with being spread too thin, rather more a sign of lost interest. Choice is a good thing - innovation is found in it. Code is not difficult to produce, ideas are the difficult part. And the best way to generate more ideas is to start more projects. Some of them will finish, and some of those will be useful.
A common mistake in the wysywig paradigm is pre-mature markup. People get slowed down making sure their masterpiece looks right (or worse fighting with the fsking tool), when really writing isn't related to how it looks - it's communication. Talk to any real writer, and you will probably find they use a plain format (paper, typwritten, textfiles, plain word docs).
Markup should always happen/after/ the writing itself. My personal approach is to use a text editor, and then some simple custom scripts to convert it's obvious format into pdf, html/css, xml, troff, etc. The biggest win is I never fight with my editor, and I can concentrate on writing. And, I can export to any format I choose - though I do have to write the filter.
At work when doing professional documentation, our layout people extract the raw text and apply to their own Framemaker setups - so all the formatting our developers do is really in vain. The doc dept. has no trouble with my plain text stuff;-) I've even extracted some of it using filters to simplify their life more.
Docbook itself is fine - but make life simple for the writers, don't make them think about markup (as much as possible anyway). My vote is on the plain-text editors + filters... but word docs and the same can work, though the tool tends to get in the way of thinking about communicating.
some years ago i saw an ad for dreamhost here... back in the pre-osdn days of slashdot. i've used them since and been pleased with the experience. prices are good, service is good, and they run debian on all their servers. i've run a few mid-traffic sites there for a few years, as have a few friends - and downtime has been truly insignificant (and I measure it). as well, i've never had to ask them to install an apache module or perl lib - as they always have their servers well stocked with recent, well-patched libs.
and no, i don't work for them or anything like that.
I still don't know how well apple will do with xserve - but I do know it has some great possibilities. My thoughts are that apple snuck this one past them all... and will hit them hard. Unix + sleek hardware + sleek front-end... go apple!
I seem to remember a bit on the mailing list about Ximian releasing their stuff using Gnome2.0 "when it was ready", which isn't now. The 'unstable' Gnome2 channel is survivable, but I find stuff regularly doesn't work, at least when I was mucking with it around the initial 2.0 release.
You can also try Garnome (auto builds from sources) - which seems to be quite stable. It is actually quite easy to build, as it has only a few dependancies that it doesn't automagically resolve and download.
Or, you could wait for 2.0 to stabalize a bit (I don't use it on production machines). This is probably your best bet, as there are not many apps ported to the new APIs. Gnome2 is cool - but wait until the paint dries to put it into production;-)
I've been using xfree86 on win32 for several months now, as it has been buildable from source for some time. It is a bit slower than exceed, and doesn't run rootless (i.e., there is always a window around it). But, it is liberated - and functional... what more could you ask for?;-P
I am guessing that it is slower because of a few required hacks in cygwin... like fork(), select(), etc. that have to be approximated on win32 (certain posix/*nix-esque primitives do not exist). These cyg hacks are quite slow. But, don't complain, these folks bring us wonderful ports of liberated software.
Also, kde 2.1 and gnome1.4 are ported to win32/cyg/xfree and are mostly functional. I use windowmaker, though, as it is much more stable at this point.
First, I've been using Gnome2 for about a month now (garnome rocks), and it is quite good. I've also been following the irc/mailing list/web/newsgroup banter for ages - the discussions there are gold. Sure, there have been simplifications, and not everything is ported or finished yet - but it is still *new*. The cardinal rule of the Bazaar is to release/early/, and release/often/... this provides visability and feedback. Consider gnome2 released early and often - and this is a good thing.
Now I'd like to see the/. children stop whining. You don't like gnome2? Fix it. Report bugs. Get involved with it earlier in the development cycle... building it isn't exactly rocket science. Read the design docs, join the irc discussions, browse the mailing lists. The whining, though, is just stupid. You are liberated. Free software provides you with many freedoms; if gnome isn't exactly what you want, then MAKE IT SO (or shut up).
I use both Liberated software (like Gnome), and constrained software (like Windows) on a daily basis - a dichotomy that messes with my brain. But, at the end of the day when I go home I consider myself fucking lucky to be Free. I am able to choose the software I use, and I am free to contribute to it daily. Can I do this with propietary software? Could I afford the incredible software I use on a daily basis?
Don't complain if you are not interested in making it better: you are wasting your freedom. Your complaints only add to the FUD. Embrace your freedom!
I was offered a job during the dot-com daze... paid something like 2x what I was making at a 'boring' embedded-type systems job. I was offered a counter offer, and accepted - but not based on the $$ - just based on the balance of the two opportunities. The dot-com looked exciting (and are actually still around in a smaller form), and the 'systems' job was solid (though a bit boring at times). Why did I take the counter offer? For me, it was stability. I knew that the boring job would be around in 5 years (which it was), and that the dot-com might not.
Now, I would say that asking for a counter-offer is somewhat shady. I mentioned to my boss that I was leaving, and they rushed to counter-offer... but the whole effort smelled foul. Something about having to threaten to leave before getting a raise just doesn't feel right. Oddly enough, some years later I can see that I'll not really see the $$ I can get elsewhere without another such mgt jolt.
I don't think I'd accept a counter offer again either, one chance is really enough. If my employer still can't move with the industry after being shown once of their folly (while still claiming to respect my value to the company) then I suspect they really only are avoiding having to fill my seat with another warm body. That's not respect.
We've used STLPort on all our currently 'supported' platforms for a few years now (Tru64, Win32, Solaris, Linux) - and we can generally build with it or the vendor provided one. I agree that the Dinkumware STL that ships with VC6 is useless - avoid it if you can!
The greatest property of Freely available sources that affects security is the fact that a larger community can improve the sources. To leave security at the hands of a private few will always result in changes that reflect the needs of the few (cost, marketability, etc.).
Again the numbers presented in this security comparison are incomplete - and poorly weighed. The number of security holes by distribution must be considered along side number of installations, nature of the installation, severity of hole, time to repair, time to notification, cost of comprimise, etc. For example, how long does it take for a Gnu/Linux or BSD distro to post a patch to a security concern? How long for HP, IBM, or Microsoft? How many Unix based security flaws cause wide-spread problems? At what cost (comparison)?
I think Freely available sources have a better chance at improving rapidly outside of the concerns of a Big Evil Empire - the motivations are warped by lesser concerns (namely not by greed). The Big Evil Empires are not primarly motivated by the desire to improve their sources (generally), but rather by business and other greed-centric concerns.
I have greater trust in security when I have the Freedom to have some impact on its quality. Why would I trust a greed-based development system to ensure my rights are first? A community based system - at least in the long run - will be more secure... or if nothing else, individuals will have the freedom to improve the security themselves.
Modality is an incredibly evil paradigm... but removing it entirly (which I do using Gnome or *step) has some reverse flaws. When want a dialog to take focus, it doesn't - it is really a context thing (file open, vs. a message dialog).
I really think that message boxes for information are a twit's solution. The framework should support some flexible non-modal way of informing/querying the user. I want the information, but it can f*cking wait until I am finished what I am doing now.
The thing that has always struck me about KDE and Gnome (among other WMs), are the fact that they are alternate implementations and approaches to common problems. Who is to say that Microsoft gets it right with the.NET interfaces... or Gnome for that matter??! The beauty is in the diversity.
I prefer Gnome myself, and have great respect for the bonobo and oaf implementations. I contrast the Gnome approach and the Microsoft approach when training developers - as their is much to learn in the differences. The KDE approach, as well, has many things worth learning from (QT for example). Remember that these systems all have good and bad points, and better - so much to learn from!
If Gnome were to embrace.NET, I'd be dissapointed. Not because I hate Microsoft (though they do irk me from time to time), but because the diversity in the approach to problem solving will push computing further ahead. Gnome has taught us many things, implemented a number of standards well, and brought us a number of innovations. KDE and Microsoft have done the same - to some degree.
Look at what Galeon has done for browsers... they caused Mozilla to sneak the tabbed-browsing feature in pre 1.0. I wouldn't be suprised if IE has tabbed browsing somewhere in the future. Why? The competition brewed a form of freedom for the user. Someone wanted tabbed browsing (not that there is anything *wrong* with that), and so someone got it. Others liked it, and have gotten the feature as well. What happens without this diversity?
Yes, I've seen the same thing: 'Expert' UML God creates gobs of lofty diagrams - resulting system fails. UML is not the fault though, it is the inability of the designers shining through. A design needs to describe a viable vision of how a software system will solve some particular problem set... after that communicating it has a purpose.
The problem (I think) is that UML is applied too often for its own sake (a.k.a. the zealot syndrome). The result is pristine UML that describes an unworkable system. Zealously applying anything is rarely a solution on its own. I've noticed that the same applies to the over-application of OO, Extreme programming, and peanut-butter.
Remember, balance in all things. There is such a thing as too much - even of the good stuff.
Ghostview (postscript viewer) will read most PDFs... less the encrypted ones. PDF is really quite close to postscript, less the evil (propietary) extensions.
Slashdot Mirror
Holy crap batman, it's scorched earth ... but in 3d. All of the old weapons are there, as is the collab play. It even plays like the old game, mostly. Now I have to convince some ppl to install tonight, and I'll kick their collective asses.
...
I remember looking at this project a year ago, and it was closed (afair), and not very far along. But now
It relies on 3d accell (read binary NV drivers for X folk), WxWindows, and SDL, but it builds on my two recent systems fine. It runs well at 1280x1024@24 on my P3-667 + NV G4mx.
Does anybody remember tools like STOS? STOS was a basic-language and dev environment for the Atari ST . You could put a game together in a few hours, including sprites, music. It was as simple as the basic-shells of the 8-bit days, simple enough for a 10 year old to build a game in a weekend.
... but they lack the integrated tools (sprite editor, score editor, map editor). A toolset on top of python + pygame would rock.
I can still pull out my ST and whip a game together with that tool. The only thing that comes close today is Python + pygame (or perl + sdl)
From Canada, of course. And that's $15 Canadian, which is abou $11USD. Two national chains here (A&B, FutureShop) have stuck it to the recording industry by ignoring fixed pricing (for several years now).
Jorn at robotwisdom has been ranting about XML for a years now.
xmlsucks.org has a whole wiki of xml rants.
The Advogato has discussed xml evils at least once. There are more rants in the user journals if you've got time to search.
XML is just a text markup - a very verbose, flexible one at that. It's not much different than a good hammer. Great tool for pounding nails ... but not everything is a nail ...
From the man himself ...
Haha ah haha... Oh, wait ... that wasn't intentionally funny.
Personal preference of coding style does not define good vs. bad code. Quality is defined by consistent attention to detail, where those details are related to correctness, robustness, efficiency, security, etc.
In my years of coding, I've been mistaken in thinking there was ONE TRUE WAY in terms of coding style. I was wrong, and so are you. Style is only perpheral to other *important* qualities in software.
This was the subject of this week's CBC radio program (available in .ogg) Quirks and Quarks : Bisecting Bioterrorism (ogg).
Is concerning to see the multitude of anti-Freedom directives produced in these last few years ...
Here in western Canada, we've been able to use our debit cards at Burger King's and McDicks for almost 10 years. These days, pizza delivery dudes bring their hand-held debit machines to your door ... and every mom-n-pop shop has one. Stores advertise if they /dont/ take debit, and it is a rare site indeed.
| * Porn, /shudder/
... my wife won a gag-gift (haha) - a soft-porn book printed on waterproof paper - at her xmas party. No great suprise really, pr0n is a leader in new technologies ...
Funny thing actually
Also on the West coast of Canada is Quality Foods, who have been delivering groceries for at least a few years: QF online ... with shipping charges of CAD$9.95 (~USD$6.50). They have over 10k items in their online store.
They even deliver goods from B.C. liquor stores, which is a new service for our Province (we have rather draconian liquor laws here in western Canada).
This is a load of crap: no one needs commercial software. Evolution is similar to Outlook - but certainly not a copy. In nearly every way, Evolution is better - and it's not like Outlook is innovative. Outlook is a very obvious approach to mail that just happened to be pushed down our throats.
I'm not sure if you remember Eudora - which would have certainly grown into something as good as Outlook ... but we never found out, as Microsoft pre-installed Outlook express on every desktop in the universe. Eudora didn't even have a chance ... same with Netscape, etc. Exactly where is the innovation in that?
Microsoft shoved Outlook on us too: bundling with Office. Exactly how likely is anyone to choose something outside of what their IT department uses? There is so little choice in it all.
Worse, Outlook is stagnant. When was the last time Outlook received a new feature? I've not seen any significant change in it since it's first release, almost 6 years ago. This too is innovation?
On the other hand, Evolution implements a very standard mail interface - and does it with flair. Sure, it looks like Outlook, but it's not just a dumb copy. Every feature packed into Evolultion is thought out (not just copied), and improved. Single click message highlighting? Not in Outlook. VFolders? Not in outlook. Search bar? Not in Outlook. Configurable 'start' page? Not in Outlook. Standard - did you read that? - a standard mailbox format. Not in Outlook. Image blocking? Not in Outlook.
I fail to see exactly why we need Microsoft. Maybe it's the blind-eye to security. Or maybe it's the extend and extinguish bulldozing of all competition. Or maybe it's the frequent feature additions. Or perhaps it's the great mail handling or standards adherance. Or, maybe not. I'll live fine without Microsoft.
Too thin? Unfinished projects has little to do with being spread too thin, rather more a sign of lost interest. Choice is a good thing - innovation is found in it. Code is not difficult to produce, ideas are the difficult part. And the best way to generate more ideas is to start more projects. Some of them will finish, and some of those will be useful.
Avoid the borg! There is no single right way.
A common mistake in the wysywig paradigm is pre-mature markup. People get slowed down making sure their masterpiece looks right (or worse fighting with the fsking tool), when really writing isn't related to how it looks - it's communication. Talk to any real writer, and you will probably find they use a plain format (paper, typwritten, textfiles, plain word docs).
/after/ the writing itself. My personal approach is to use a text editor, and then some simple custom scripts to convert it's obvious format into pdf, html/css, xml, troff, etc. The biggest win is I never fight with my editor, and I can concentrate on writing. And, I can export to any format I choose - though I do have to write the filter.
;-) I've even extracted some of it using filters to simplify their life more.
... but word docs and the same can work, though the tool tends to get in the way of thinking about communicating.
Markup should always happen
At work when doing professional documentation, our layout people extract the raw text and apply to their own Framemaker setups - so all the formatting our developers do is really in vain. The doc dept. has no trouble with my plain text stuff
Docbook itself is fine - but make life simple for the writers, don't make them think about markup (as much as possible anyway). My vote is on the plain-text editors + filters
My CDN$.02.
some years ago i saw an ad for dreamhost here ... back in the pre-osdn days of slashdot. i've used them since and been pleased with the experience. prices are good, service is good, and they run debian on all their servers. i've run a few mid-traffic sites there for a few years, as have a few friends - and downtime has been truly insignificant (and I measure it). as well, i've never had to ask them to install an apache module or perl lib - as they always have their servers well stocked with recent, well-patched libs.
and no, i don't work for them or anything like that.
I still don't know how well apple will do with xserve - but I do know it has some great possibilities. My thoughts are that apple snuck this one past them all ... and will hit them hard. Unix + sleek hardware + sleek front-end ... go apple!
I seem to remember a bit on the mailing list about Ximian releasing their stuff using Gnome2.0 "when it was ready", which isn't now. The 'unstable' Gnome2 channel is survivable, but I find stuff regularly doesn't work, at least when I was mucking with it around the initial 2.0 release.
You can also try Garnome (auto builds from sources) - which seems to be quite stable. It is actually quite easy to build, as it has only a few dependancies that it doesn't automagically resolve and download.
Or, you could wait for 2.0 to stabalize a bit (I don't use it on production machines). This is probably your best bet, as there are not many apps ported to the new APIs. Gnome2 is cool - but wait until the paint dries to put it into production ;-)
BTW - kudos to the Gnome2 team(s)!
I've been using xfree86 on win32 for several months now, as it has been buildable from source for some time. It is a bit slower than exceed, and doesn't run rootless (i.e., there is always a window around it). But, it is liberated - and functional ... what more could you ask for? ;-P
I am guessing that it is slower because of a few required hacks in cygwin ... like fork(), select(), etc. that have to be approximated on win32 (certain posix/*nix-esque primitives do not exist). These cyg hacks are quite slow. But, don't complain, these folks bring us wonderful ports of liberated software.
Also, kde 2.1 and gnome1.4 are ported to win32/cyg/xfree and are mostly functional. I use windowmaker, though, as it is much more stable at this point.
First, I've been using Gnome2 for about a month now (garnome rocks), and it is quite good. I've also been following the irc/mailing list/web/newsgroup banter for ages - the discussions there are gold. Sure, there have been simplifications, and not everything is ported or finished yet - but it is still *new*. The cardinal rule of the Bazaar is to release /early/, and release /often/ ... this provides visability and feedback. Consider gnome2 released early and often - and this is a good thing.
Now I'd like to see the /. children stop whining. You don't like gnome2? Fix it. Report bugs. Get involved with it earlier in the development cycle ... building it isn't exactly rocket science. Read the design docs, join the irc discussions, browse the mailing lists. The whining, though, is just stupid. You are liberated. Free software provides you with many freedoms; if gnome isn't exactly what you want, then MAKE IT SO (or shut up).
I use both Liberated software (like Gnome), and constrained software (like Windows) on a daily basis - a dichotomy that messes with my brain. But, at the end of the day when I go home I consider myself fucking lucky to be Free. I am able to choose the software I use, and I am free to contribute to it daily. Can I do this with propietary software? Could I afford the incredible software I use on a daily basis?
Don't complain if you are not interested in making it better: you are wasting your freedom. Your complaints only add to the FUD. Embrace your freedom!
I was offered a job during the dot-com daze ... paid something like 2x what I was making at a 'boring' embedded-type systems job. I was offered a counter offer, and accepted - but not based on the $$ - just based on the balance of the two opportunities. The dot-com looked exciting (and are actually still around in a smaller form), and the 'systems' job was solid (though a bit boring at times). Why did I take the counter offer? For me, it was stability. I knew that the boring job would be around in 5 years (which it was), and that the dot-com might not.
Now, I would say that asking for a counter-offer is somewhat shady. I mentioned to my boss that I was leaving, and they rushed to counter-offer ... but the whole effort smelled foul. Something about having to threaten to leave before getting a raise just doesn't feel right. Oddly enough, some years later I can see that I'll not really see the $$ I can get elsewhere without another such mgt jolt.
I don't think I'd accept a counter offer again either, one chance is really enough. If my employer still can't move with the industry after being shown once of their folly (while still claiming to respect my value to the company) then I suspect they really only are avoiding having to fill my seat with another warm body. That's not respect.
We've used STLPort on all our currently 'supported' platforms for a few years now (Tru64, Win32, Solaris, Linux) - and we can generally build with it or the vendor provided one. I agree that the Dinkumware STL that ships with VC6 is useless - avoid it if you can!
The greatest property of Freely available sources that affects security is the fact that a larger community can improve the sources. To leave security at the hands of a private few will always result in changes that reflect the needs of the few (cost, marketability, etc.).
... or if nothing else, individuals will have the freedom to improve the security themselves.
Again the numbers presented in this security comparison are incomplete - and poorly weighed. The number of security holes by distribution must be considered along side number of installations, nature of the installation, severity of hole, time to repair, time to notification, cost of comprimise, etc. For example, how long does it take for a Gnu/Linux or BSD distro to post a patch to a security concern? How long for HP, IBM, or Microsoft? How many Unix based security flaws cause wide-spread problems? At what cost (comparison)?
I think Freely available sources have a better chance at improving rapidly outside of the concerns of a Big Evil Empire - the motivations are warped by lesser concerns (namely not by greed). The Big Evil Empires are not primarly motivated by the desire to improve their sources (generally), but rather by business and other greed-centric concerns.
I have greater trust in security when I have the Freedom to have some impact on its quality. Why would I trust a greed-based development system to ensure my rights are first? A community based system - at least in the long run - will be more secure
Modality is an incredibly evil paradigm ... but removing it entirly (which I do using Gnome or *step) has some reverse flaws. When want a dialog to take focus, it doesn't - it is really a context thing (file open, vs. a message dialog).
I really think that message boxes for information are a twit's solution. The framework should support some flexible non-modal way of informing/querying the user. I want the information, but it can f*cking wait until I am finished what I am doing now.
The thing that has always struck me about KDE and Gnome (among other WMs), are the fact that they are alternate implementations and approaches to common problems. Who is to say that Microsoft gets it right with the .NET interfaces ... or Gnome for that matter??! The beauty is in the diversity.
.NET, I'd be dissapointed. Not because I hate Microsoft (though they do irk me from time to time), but because the diversity in the approach to problem solving will push computing further ahead. Gnome has taught us many things, implemented a number of standards well, and brought us a number of innovations. KDE and Microsoft have done the same - to some degree.
... they caused Mozilla to sneak the tabbed-browsing feature in pre 1.0. I wouldn't be suprised if IE has tabbed browsing somewhere in the future. Why? The competition brewed a form of freedom for the user. Someone wanted tabbed browsing (not that there is anything *wrong* with that), and so someone got it. Others liked it, and have gotten the feature as well. What happens without this diversity?
I prefer Gnome myself, and have great respect for the bonobo and oaf implementations. I contrast the Gnome approach and the Microsoft approach when training developers - as their is much to learn in the differences. The KDE approach, as well, has many things worth learning from (QT for example). Remember that these systems all have good and bad points, and better - so much to learn from!
If Gnome were to embrace
Look at what Galeon has done for browsers
Yes, I've seen the same thing: 'Expert' UML God creates gobs of lofty diagrams - resulting system fails. UML is not the fault though, it is the inability of the designers shining through. A design needs to describe a viable vision of how a software system will solve some particular problem set ... after that communicating it has a purpose.
The problem (I think) is that UML is applied too often for its own sake (a.k.a. the zealot syndrome). The result is pristine UML that describes an unworkable system. Zealously applying anything is rarely a solution on its own. I've noticed that the same applies to the over-application of OO, Extreme programming, and peanut-butter.
Remember, balance in all things. There is such a thing as too much - even of the good stuff.
Ghostview (postscript viewer) will read most PDFs ... less the encrypted ones. PDF is really quite close to postscript, less the evil (propietary) extensions.