I don't agree with the premise you're putting forward about the programmers being 'bad'. What is bad is less about the programmers and more about the end product:
a) you're beholden to the original developers to make changes b) if the original developer goes belly up you're screwed in terms up updates/changes c) you can only run the software where they say you can run it ("We can't be bothered to do a Windows/Linux/BSD/SkyOS/64bit etc. etc. port") d) the software won't necessary survive its useful life, it will only be maintained as long as it is commerically viable for the closed source developer to maintain it.
That's just a few I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there are more.
"Until you try to swap desktops and find that all the toolbars disappear from excel"
Use Virtual Dimension instead of the Windows Power Toy. Still no where near as nice as under Linux, but it at least makes virtual desktops usable under Windows.
They might still have a hard time with that argument. Is installing something different for a completely different purpose really circumventing copy protection? It's not being used to get access to the content the copy protection is there to protect.
He's referring to the fact that it's not unusual for products to get a $1=£1 conversion here, making the equivalent UK price a lot higher, no matter what the exchange rate is.
Hmm, let's see, on my menus under "Internet" I've got:
* Drivel Journal Editor * Ekiga Softphone * Epiphany Web Browser * Evolution Mail * Firefox Web Browser * Firestarter * Gaim Instant Messenger * gFTP * Google Earth * Java Web Start 1.4 * Liferea Feed Reader * Mozilla Composer * Mozilla Web Browser * Pan Newsreader * Terminal Services Client * Thunderbird Mail * XChat-GNOME IRC Client
What's complicated about that? It is an order of magnitude less complicated than the ones on my Windows machine at work. All nicely categorised and easy to find. Windows doesn't even manage to keep mine alphabetical, it's grouped into several alphabetical lists depending on whether it's in all users or my local user. So in a comparison Windows only comes on top in terms of familarity, the menu is a usability nightmare.
Microsoft Outlook (what does that do? It's icon looks like nothing to do with mail)
Internet Explorer (is that not an FTP file browser?)
Microsoft Excel (some presentation about how great microsoft are? At least that's how it appears on the menu). On Linux I have "Office -> Gnumeric Spreadsheet" and "Office -> OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet".
That's not including all the other applications hidden in vendor rather than functional menus.
"Like how Firefox lets you select text and "view selection source", except it would show you the CSS styling, including all the levels of inheritance."
It exists in Firefox already and it is called the DOM inspector. It lets you see what styles are applied to an element, which stylesheets they come from, what line they're on and everything.
I think you need to re-read what he said. He seemed less foaming at the mouth and more frustrated that people fail to understand a very simple concept. He's saying that guns, the greatest source of all freedom according to some, are useless in practice and that anyone fighting a genuine resistance movement have had to fall back on bombs or other dirty measures when met by superior firepower. It's quite a simple idea really.
Guns do let your enemy know where you are. If they've got the firepower, firing a gun at them can hurt you a lot more than it hurts them.
It's all about a level playing field, we're two hundred years past guns equalling a level playing field unless you're talking about inner city gang warfare. If people seriously think they can take down a government with handguns then they're seriously deluded, they idea might give them a warm glow but it's nothing more than an illusion. The best they can really do is team up with a foreign power that is looking to take over.
That's why in a democracy, however flawed, the best way to overthrow a government is via the ballot box.
"Blu-Ray : One word : Hype. There has yet to be a game that spans more than 1 DVD and I'm not spending $500 for a movie player AND having to re-buy my movie collection."
Well it does expand the space available for the next five years of games, and make compilations possible. You could have all four resident evil games on one disk for instance.
I've got some great retro compilations, and having that space available will make it possible to produce compilations of PS2 games.
I think the effect of the adult industry is well overblown. They may release a lot of titles, but I doubt if the sales for each title is that high. I know it's probably one of those hidden markets, but I don't own any and don't know anyone who does. We ain't prudes either. If high street shops sell them, they tend to have a small corner tucked away in the corner. So I'd be very surprised if they have much of an impact at all.
That's why you Brits always call us Americans "Yank".
I don't know anyone who calls Americans "Yanks". Maybe during the second world war, but not these days. The only place I can remember seeing it used recently was on a seventies TV series. It's a bit retro.
"And don't even get me started on file associations (what program runs when you double-click on a file with a given extension). No matter what I tried, I couldn't get Gnome to let me change the file associations for files on an SMB share. And, it's absolutely opaque how to change them for regular files too without resorting to editing text files in/usr/share/blahblah."
What's difficult about right clicking and choosing "Properties" -> "Open With"?
As for you other experiences, if that was typical do you think any organisation could run with Linux on the desktop? Is the SMB share a Samba Linux box or a Windows machine? If it's a Windows machine do you think a typical Linux desktop installation would store it's configuration data on a non-native filesystem managed by a foreign operating system with alien file locking policies?
If you struggled that much maybe you should have got someone experienced with that kind of set up to build a demo setup for you? It sounds like you set yourself up to fail.
Isn't your personal data the stuff that *should* be backed up. You can re-install your OS quite easily. If a virus (unlikely) or a harddrive failure or accidental deletion (far more likely) causes you to lose your data then backups are the only way out of that.
"Linux advocates should acknowledge it & DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! Currently it is glossed over, this is just as bad as wintel fanboys & trolls."
Hell no, it's not glossed over as it's one of its strengths. Who wants every application carrying its own library baggage so fixes to a library are no longer applied globally. As long as these things are managed transparently by the system it just isn't a problem. It seems a lot of people really love to install apps with rpm -i or dpg -i, manually chase down the dependencies, then bitch about how difficult it is.
At the moment you can download a tiny application that can contain a huge amount of functionality as it's standing on the shoulders of giants (the available libraries) rather than re-inventing the wheel.
"Still another is to concede some evolution occurred and suggest that God guided evolution. The important thing to realize here is that Creationists are a loud bunch, but they don't speak for all Christians. For example, some suggest the 7 days in question were actually epochs of time of indeterminate length "like unto" 1000 years each."
I think one of the problems with Christians needing to constantly re-invent themselves to fit in with what science is proving (by suggesting God is guiding evolution for instance), is the fundamental lack of anything like that in the bible. I think for instance that the evidence of the bible being a wholly human work rather than having any influence from a greater being is quite plain to see. It's not so much what's in there, it's what is missing.
It's not just evolutionary science. It the battles that science won long ago that are not so contraversial these days. Basic scientific facts like: the earth being round, that the earth orbits around the sun, the existence of atoms, the existence of bacteria. There is so much missing that I find it impossible to believe the suggestion a higher power has ever communicated with human beings. Then there are all the morals of the time that are written in these books, things that would be considered completely immoral now are perfectly acceptable in the bible. So it says little of a being standing outside of time providing guidance, rather giving more a sense of the usual human political manoeuverings trying to give a certain group the upper hand.
Frankly it's absurd that a bronze age belief system, encompassing bronze age beliefs, still has such influence.
"The Free Software Foundation also owns the copyright to your software once you use their license, so even though stallman believes "software should have no owners", he really believes that software should all be owned by the FSF. While this is may be their ideal of "freedom", it basically takes all the rights away from the original programmer."
No they don't, you own the copyright to your code. They hold the copyright on the GPL.
They suggest that people assign copyright to them, but it's no more than a suggestion. It's certainly not automatic or part of the GPL.
"If OpenSSH had been a commercial project, then they would be charging for the use of OpenSSH and wouldn't have this financial problem."
If OpenSSH were a commercial project wouldn't everyone be using the GnuSSH instead? I can't think of any piece of commercial software that offers basic infrastructure services that is more popular than its F/OSS equivalent.
"Perhaps a better title would be "When F/OSS fails those that develop it.""
"Oh wait, does that make too much sense?"
No, not really. What you're missing is that F/OSS is fundamentally a development methodology. It isn't tied up with the funding. Contributions will come from lots of different sources, funded and unfunded, paid and unpaid. If you want to run a funded F/OSS project, as opposed providing source as a method of collaboration, then you need a funding source in place. A F/OSS project doesn't necessarily need funding, what it does need is time from contributers. That is the funding a lot of companies do give to F/OSS, employee time, and that can often have more value than mere cash.
"If he installed XP, then had to find an internet browser (interesting task without, you know, a browser)"
This is easy in Linux without a browser. You open the software update tool, look in the internet section and choose which browser(s) you want to install. A few clicks and they're all installed. I don't see why Microsoft couldn't do something similar. Don't they already have windows update?
"Plus, since the command is in the clearly labelled Layers menu (which would be the first place most rational people would look for layering functions), you aren't required to guess whether right-clicking on a particular window might bring up the option you want."
Can flash do anything more than sit in little boxes on the screen? As far as I'm aware it's still constrained by that box and that makes it less useful than it could be, especially in terms of accessibility.
Slashdot Mirror
"The many usability problems are well known, and were much discussed. One major flaw was the inability to enter in a pathname or filename manually."
You claim that but have you actually tried doing it?
Enter a path, starting with / and it will just work. It also does completion of what you're typing.
So it works fine and doesn't get in the way.
I don't agree with the premise you're putting forward about the programmers being 'bad'. What is bad is less about the programmers and more about the end product:
a) you're beholden to the original developers to make changes
b) if the original developer goes belly up you're screwed in terms up updates/changes
c) you can only run the software where they say you can run it ("We can't be bothered to do a Windows/Linux/BSD/SkyOS/64bit etc. etc. port")
d) the software won't necessary survive its useful life, it will only be maintained as long as it is commerically viable for the closed source developer to maintain it.
That's just a few I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there are more.
"Until you try to swap desktops and find that all the toolbars disappear from excel"
Use Virtual Dimension instead of the Windows Power Toy. Still no where near as nice as under Linux, but it at least makes virtual desktops usable under Windows.
They might still have a hard time with that argument. Is installing something different for a completely different purpose really circumventing copy protection? It's not being used to get access to the content the copy protection is there to protect.
He's referring to the fact that it's not unusual for products to get a $1=£1 conversion here, making the equivalent UK price a lot higher, no matter what the exchange rate is.
Hmm, let's see, on my menus under "Internet" I've got:
* Drivel Journal Editor
* Ekiga Softphone
* Epiphany Web Browser
* Evolution Mail
* Firefox Web Browser
* Firestarter
* Gaim Instant Messenger
* gFTP
* Google Earth
* Java Web Start 1.4
* Liferea Feed Reader
* Mozilla Composer
* Mozilla Web Browser
* Pan Newsreader
* Terminal Services Client
* Thunderbird Mail
* XChat-GNOME IRC Client
What's complicated about that? It is an order of magnitude less complicated than the ones on my Windows machine at work. All nicely categorised and easy to find. Windows doesn't even manage to keep mine alphabetical, it's grouped into several alphabetical lists depending on whether it's in all users or my local user. So in a comparison Windows only comes on top in terms of familarity, the menu is a usability nightmare.
Microsoft Outlook (what does that do? It's icon looks like nothing to do with mail)
Internet Explorer (is that not an FTP file browser?)
Microsoft Excel (some presentation about how great microsoft are? At least that's how it appears on the menu). On Linux I have "Office -> Gnumeric Spreadsheet" and "Office -> OpenOffice.org Spreadsheet".
That's not including all the other applications hidden in vendor rather than functional menus.
Actually it was a joke.
.exe file and click next until program installs, then use the program.
The reality:
Windows
Go to web a site, download/run
Linux
Insert iPod.
Now which of those is easier?
"Like how Firefox lets you select text and "view selection source", except it would show you the CSS styling, including all the levels of inheritance."
It exists in Firefox already and it is called the DOM inspector. It lets you see what styles are applied to an element, which stylesheets they come from, what line they're on and everything.
I think you need to re-read what he said. He seemed less foaming at the mouth and more frustrated that people fail to understand a very simple concept. He's saying that guns, the greatest source of all freedom according to some, are useless in practice and that anyone fighting a genuine resistance movement have had to fall back on bombs or other dirty measures when met by superior firepower. It's quite a simple idea really.
Guns do let your enemy know where you are. If they've got the firepower, firing a gun at them can hurt you a lot more than it hurts them.
It's all about a level playing field, we're two hundred years past guns equalling a level playing field unless you're talking about inner city gang warfare. If people seriously think they can take down a government with handguns then they're seriously deluded, they idea might give them a warm glow but it's nothing more than an illusion. The best they can really do is team up with a foreign power that is looking to take over.
That's why in a democracy, however flawed, the best way to overthrow a government is via the ballot box.
"Blu-Ray : One word : Hype. There has yet to be a game that spans more than 1 DVD and I'm not spending $500 for a movie player AND having to re-buy my movie collection."
Well it does expand the space available for the next five years of games, and make compilations possible. You could have all four resident evil games on one disk for instance.
I've got some great retro compilations, and having that space available will make it possible to produce compilations of PS2 games.
That's out of date, Jackson ran out of money so his record company took the rights off him.
I think the effect of the adult industry is well overblown. They may release a lot of titles, but I doubt if the sales for each title is that high. I know it's probably one of those hidden markets, but I don't own any and don't know anyone who does. We ain't prudes either. If high street shops sell them, they tend to have a small corner tucked away in the corner. So I'd be very surprised if they have much of an impact at all.
That's why you Brits always call us Americans "Yank".
I don't know anyone who calls Americans "Yanks". Maybe during the second world war, but not these days. The only place I can remember seeing it used recently was on a seventies TV series. It's a bit retro.
"And don't even get me started on file associations (what program runs when you double-click on a file with a given extension). No matter what I tried, I couldn't get Gnome to let me change the file associations for files on an SMB share. And, it's absolutely opaque how to change them for regular files too without resorting to editing text files in /usr/share/blahblah."
What's difficult about right clicking and choosing "Properties" -> "Open With"?
As for you other experiences, if that was typical do you think any organisation could run with Linux on the desktop? Is the SMB share a Samba Linux box or a Windows machine? If it's a Windows machine do you think a typical Linux desktop installation would store it's configuration data on a non-native filesystem managed by a foreign operating system with alien file locking policies?
If you struggled that much maybe you should have got someone experienced with that kind of set up to build a demo setup for you? It sounds like you set yourself up to fail.
Isn't your personal data the stuff that *should* be backed up. You can re-install your OS quite easily. If a virus (unlikely) or a harddrive failure or accidental deletion (far more likely) causes you to lose your data then backups are the only way out of that.
"I've seen parent dump a two month old into the back seat whilst they sit up in front and then wonder why the child is howling."
Airbags and carseats don't tend to mix very well. That's why you'll see most car seats strapped in the back.
"Linux advocates should acknowledge it & DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
Currently it is glossed over, this is just as bad as wintel fanboys & trolls."
Hell no, it's not glossed over as it's one of its strengths. Who wants every application carrying its own library baggage so fixes to a library are no longer applied globally. As long as these things are managed transparently by the system it just isn't a problem. It seems a lot of people really love to install apps with rpm -i or dpg -i, manually chase down the dependencies, then bitch about how difficult it is.
At the moment you can download a tiny application that can contain a huge amount of functionality as it's standing on the shoulders of giants (the available libraries) rather than re-inventing the wheel.
"Still another is to concede some evolution occurred and suggest that God guided evolution. The important thing to realize here is that Creationists are a loud bunch, but they don't speak for all Christians. For example, some suggest the 7 days in question were actually epochs of time of indeterminate length "like unto" 1000 years each."
I think one of the problems with Christians needing to constantly re-invent themselves to fit in with what science is proving (by suggesting God is guiding evolution for instance), is the fundamental lack of anything like that in the bible. I think for instance that the evidence of the bible being a wholly human work rather than having any influence from a greater being is quite plain to see. It's not so much what's in there, it's what is missing.
It's not just evolutionary science. It the battles that science won long ago that are not so contraversial these days. Basic scientific facts like: the earth being round, that the earth orbits around the sun, the existence of atoms, the existence of bacteria. There is so much missing that I find it impossible to believe the suggestion a higher power has ever communicated with human beings. Then there are all the morals of the time that are written in these books, things that would be considered completely immoral now are perfectly acceptable in the bible. So it says little of a being standing outside of time providing guidance, rather giving more a sense of the usual human political manoeuverings trying to give a certain group the upper hand.
Frankly it's absurd that a bronze age belief system, encompassing bronze age beliefs, still has such influence.
"The Free Software Foundation also owns the copyright to your software once you use their license, so even though stallman believes "software should have no owners", he really believes that software should all be owned by the FSF. While this is may be their ideal of "freedom", it basically takes all the rights away from the original programmer."
No they don't, you own the copyright to your code. They hold the copyright on the GPL.
They suggest that people assign copyright to them, but it's no more than a suggestion. It's certainly not automatic or part of the GPL.
He's already had to hand the rights to his record company because of his debts, so Jackson doesn't actually own them anymore.
"If OpenSSH had been a commercial project, then they would be charging for the use of OpenSSH and wouldn't have this financial problem."
If OpenSSH were a commercial project wouldn't everyone be using the GnuSSH instead? I can't think of any piece of commercial software that offers basic infrastructure services that is more popular than its F/OSS equivalent.
"Perhaps a better title would be "When F/OSS fails those that develop it.""
"Oh wait, does that make too much sense?"
No, not really. What you're missing is that F/OSS is fundamentally a development methodology. It isn't tied up with the funding. Contributions will come from lots of different sources, funded and unfunded, paid and unpaid. If you want to run a funded F/OSS project, as opposed providing source as a method of collaboration, then you need a funding source in place. A F/OSS project doesn't necessarily need funding, what it does need is time from contributers. That is the funding a lot of companies do give to F/OSS, employee time, and that can often have more value than mere cash.
"If he installed XP, then had to find an internet browser (interesting task without, you know, a browser)"
This is easy in Linux without a browser. You open the software update tool, look in the internet section and choose which browser(s) you want to install. A few clicks and they're all installed. I don't see why Microsoft couldn't do something similar. Don't they already have windows update?
"Plus, since the command is in the clearly labelled Layers menu (which would be the first place most rational people would look for layering functions), you aren't required to guess whether right-clicking on a particular window might bring up the option you want."
You aren't in The GIMP either:
Layer -> Merge Down
in the top level menu.
Can flash do anything more than sit in little boxes on the screen? As far as I'm aware it's still constrained by that box and that makes it less useful than it could be, especially in terms of accessibility.
And lack of support for this property has exactly how much of a side effect? Surely you can do better than that.
This is just eye candy, IE6's flaws are deep and pervasive. If IE7 can fix some of these that'll be a big step forward.
Mozilla's most important CSS2 shortfall is support for inline-block, but as with other properties, no support is better than buggy support.