The modern docx format (as well as OpenOffice's odt format) is just a zip archive of mostly XML files. Unzip the docx and xmllint the XML and you can get nice textual diffs. Rezip to go back to WYSIWYG.
I even wrote a simple tool to automate the process called musdex. It's on PyPI.
This toolkit is great even for WPF developers because they are liberally licensed (the MS-PL is like the BSD or MIT/X11 licenses) and thus quite customizable for WPF applications that need to do things that normal WPF controls can't quite handle.
Mono has had an implementation of the WPF subset most commonly referred to as WPF/E in Moonlight for some time. (1.0 is out there and very usable; 2.0 is in beta.) WPF/E is a strong enough subset that converting a WPF app may not be "trivial", it is doable, and it is "straightforward". WPF/E is also a "good standard" at this point because, in addition to Moonlight, Microsoft has took upon themselves to deliver official WPF/E support for Mac OS X (in Silverlight).
mrpacmanjel: It is unfortunate that the mono is so closely associated with Windows, if the mono team had created/implemented a completely new set of cross-platform libraries (that bore no relation to Microsoft's framework) it would be more accepted.
In addition to the (ECMA-standardized) Base Class Library (BCL) and several.NET-compatibility libraries (including System.Windows.Forms), Mono has a full stack of its own APIs/libraries based upon Gnome's cross-platform libraries. The Release Notes has a good overview of these inherently cross-platform Mono APIs (that work in both Mono and.NET on every platform supported by both):
Pedantic: CIL binary is just as cross-platform as JVM binary, and from what I've heard Mono is pretty spot on with binary compatibility with Windows.NET.
Therefore, should MS port Office entirely to C#, Linux binaries would not be necessary so long as Office followed good coding standards (Path.Seperator) and mono supported all of the libraries used by Office. In such an eventuality as Microsoft does indeed release Office for C#, Office should run out of the box on Linux!
Now, for those naysayers who believe that that eventuallity will ever happen: C# Office opens the possibility of one single codebase and a consolidated development group for both Office and Office: Mac (via the good work of, say, Mono and Cocoa#, for instance). This actually makes good business sense, and I will argue that there are at least some brainiacs in Microsoft who know that...
The immediate stopper on such a thing is how much Microsoft values the existing codebases over smaller development teams and entirely merged codebases. On the other hand, Microsoft has already admitted long term commitments to.NET, and that most new development will be C#, so as more C# gets mixed into the Office codebase the higher the possibility of a "purer" Office.
If you are using Firefox 1.0 you can go to Tools > Options > Advanced... and underneath the "Tabbed Browsing" header you'll find a group box with radio buttons allowing you to default Firefox to opening new tabs in the last Firefox window. I was quite pleased at this new option.
My University went through several names for the Computer Engineering and Computer Science department (current name). Probably most interesting is that the CECS department derives from and was once the "Applied Mathematics" department.
"I love to reinvent the wheel with every new project. I'm going to throw out all of those C and C++ function libraries and classes I've built so I can now reimplement them in Mono."
Unlike Java, C# (and.NET in general) have something of a large focus on "P/Invoke" aka "Platform Invoke" aka "I have this C/C++ library and I know the function I want to call so call the damn thing".
"I hate fast code! How am I supposed to write slow code in C++ when my users have a 3 GHz Pentium 4s? Oh, I know, I'll use a virtual machine!"
Why is a virtual machine necessarily slower?.NET and Mono JIT compile virtual machine bytecodes to native bytecodes and run at comparable speeds. Sure, a GC slows things down, but I'd rather have a good GC than "fastest performance possible".
"I love to learn. In fact, now that I've mastered C and C++, I'm going to throw away all of my effort invested in these languages and learn a new one."
Reread the earlier mention of P/Invoke. Now, comes the fun part, another focus of.NET and Mono as a platform is that you can compile any language to Intermediate Language bytecode. Microsoft provides (for free as in beer) an optimizing C++ compiler that can (and does) target the CLR. (Of course, to use more of the fun stuff like GC and whatnot you have to delve into the "Managed Extensions for C++", which the latest "2.0" release is in the process of ECMA standardization.) Bytecode for bytecode, if you build the app with cross-platform in mind it will run in Mono. The Mono Project, I've heard, has been experimenting with Open Source C++ compilers in the hopes of building their own similar compiler.
"Mono is not sufficiently different in terms of ease of programming to justify the switch from C++. In fact, as the example code demonstrated, Mono apps often involve more lines of code simply because every single detail of the GUI can, and must be, set by the programmer. In Windows, 9 times out of 10 I can simply use the defaults and everything comes out fine."
Who cares? It all comes down to GUI Builders. I certainly don't want to build windows by hand in source code. I've got better things to do with my time.
Microsoft isn't some demonic force, even they have to answer to their customers ("Joe Developer" using Visual Studio). What is it that they can break that wouldn't piss developers off? Better yet, what is it they could break, not piss developers off, and keep out of OS developers' hands?
Nothing.
If they change the BCL (Base Class Library, the main APIs of.NET), they get in a shitload of hell from anyone using the BCLs. Even then, with the Fusion (GAC) versioning system, all versions sit side by side, so if Mono is compatible with Framework 1.1 and Microsoft breaks things in Framework 2.0 (which they will, as Longhorn steps up to bat), existing 1.1 apps will continue to run, and Mono just has to work at adding 2.0 support.
If they change CIL (Common Intermediate Language) they piss off their development partners, and any developers working on compilers to CIL. This was one of the major goals of CIL in the first place, and I don't see Microsoft pissing these people off. Also, consider that Microsoft alone has to keep up with a large number of CIL-targeted compilers (C#, VB.Net, C++, JScript, Regex, SQL, to name a few).
Don't let worries about what Microsoft _might_ do threaten you from looking at what they have done with the.NET world.
Personally, I think SWT looks like 95-era Windows with some purple (why purple??!!) thrown in for an attempt at some sort of style. On top of that, SWT clashes with almost every other OS look and feel out there, and doesn't adapt to native LNFs.
Finally, it has been my experience that the SWT -> AWT pipeline is quite a bit slower than native window calls, and I've got better stuff to do with my time than wait for SWT to redraw my entire window every time I occlude it slightly! (As SWT apparently doesn't like to listen to the Regions provided by the Paint message, and even if it did, it would have to traverse the entire Object tree to figure which controls need repainting...)
It has been a rumor that IJ4 would be in Atlantis since LEC released Fate of Atlantis which still is the greates Indiana Jones computer game made.
Also, I've heard the hold-up isn't Lucas, but Paramount this time. Paramount owns the rights to the IJ films, and has been bugging Lucas/Spielburg/et al for years, but this year things changed as Tomb Raider and MI2 are much bigger (and "cheaper") franchises for Paramount.
Er... maybe you don't understand... you flip enough frames in front of the viewer and the mind fills in the gaps. EVERYTHING WORKS THIS WAY. There is not a single necessary second of processing power needed to change the frames in any way to create the Matrix style effect. Theoretically, those old Black and White directors could have done the same effect. Their problem was the fact that cameras were VERY expensive at the time, so you couldn't fill a room with 100s of the things. No morphing. No computer time. Simple cut, copy and paste. (with actual scissors in the case of something like the Matrix, as Hollywood _STILL_ uses analog tech)
Er... 1) This has already been/.ed: here mentioning the MSN end of the partnership. 2) Starband is really just the new name of what used to be Gilat 2 Home and what currently is my major ISP...
It wasn't the Republican vs. Whig, it was the Democratic-Republican vs. Whig, and the D-R was closer to the modern Republican party than the Democrat.
Also, there have been other parties over the years like "Federalist".
But, I think Washington was right when he said the America doesn't need parties. Of course, he was the only unafilliated pres we had.
Let me ask you this, though... all everyone is talking about with the elections is "parties" this and "parties" that, but does anyone ever really throw one??
I thought the equation X/500 home user bandwith compared to the X/2 that may be possible... I seriously doubt that this will 'blow up' the Internet. Truth be, I think that this will be the direction the Internet will take. Most companies are only thinking in the Client/Server method, and have been thinking that way since the 1970s. Microsoft has had shifts in both directions. Linux is firmly rooted ('scuse the pun) in Client/Server. I think the future can be seen in how successful, powerful, and useful Napster, Gnutella, SETI, Distributed.net, and clones have been. Why not distribute?? It cuts costs, saves money, and gives us home users the incentive to catch up in our computer technology versus the hosting department at Yahoo! or other web host. It is load balancing at the best it can be. Why load balance only internally when you can theoretically have an unlimited supply of load balancing?
Of course, distributing the whole Internet would require a rewrite and rethinking of everything from Apache to Internet Explorer to TCP/IP itself. But think about... most users already have a cache of recently visited links. Imagine searching through Explorertella for 'yahoo.com' and heading to your brothers computer which has the latest cache and lowest latency. Next you click on a category... your brother doesn't have that particular page cached, but a quick search turns up that his buddy accross the street has it. Certainly, you may eventually end up on Yahoo's main server, but with a well built system with a decent cache system and certificate (expirations) system, the user will also get the fastest possible link, and the servers will have much less bandwith.
Hope I'm not too late. Mod me up, if you want. Anyhey, my family is one of few testing the G-2-H connection. I must say that it has been a great experience... I've got it shared about my network here at home (yeehaw!). I have found that at times it has been faster (yes, I say faster) than the DSL that they compare it too [A nearby business that I spend time at has a DSL] under my own incredibly weird benchmarks. At MediaBytes.com (I think that is right...), where George Lucas in Love is hosted, I can (and do) run it at the 700k (T1++) speed on the main (server) computer and it runs great. On a DSL, the best I could get was 150k.
Okay Moderators, I've taken the flame bait. Moderate this down!! Come on!! I've only a got a few Karma points anyway, might as well take them away by cursing your precious Open Source and your damn UNIX!
I hate UNIX. I despise UNIX. I would rather work in DOS than spend another day in X Windows.
The whole platform sucks, although, from what I have heard about Miquel's post, he doesn't explain as well as you might find at Don Hopkins' page (here).
At first I thought that I might like UNIX, heck, I liked DOS back when I used it consistently. Then I actually tried using it. Ha! Using it? More like be used by it. I REINSTALLED THE DAMN THING FOUR OF FIVE TIMES BEFORE I GOT IT EVEN TO REMOTELY RESPOND TO THE HARDWARE!! I found it impossible to get a PS2 mouse working and had to resort to dumb serial mouse! In order to use a peice of software you have to write the equivalent of War in Peace in a bizarre techno-reliogious language that even the Druids wouldn't claim. The software is always IDIOTIC just so the no-life jerk who actually learns how to use every facet of it gets a kick from his superiority complex. Not to mention X Windows: X Windows is the mother of all of these idiot software designs. Not only to have to write the equivalent of War and Peace, but you have to do it backwards with eyes closed! I AM A GEEK, BUT I DON'T NEED IDIOTIC SOFTWARE TO FEEL SMART.
Sheesh... and Slashdot is full of you GPLamers who have GPL shrines in their basements. Seriously, as a Geek who deals with newbies on a continual basis, I wonder whether you GPLamers like building stupid software on purpouse, or is the lack of Sun melts some of your brain when it comes to enjoying the idiotically arcane and inane. I DON'T USE ANY OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE IN MY DAY-TO-DAY WORK, AND I DON'T PLAN TOO!! I use Windows everyday, and don't see that changing anytime soon.
One these days I'll just create my own Operating System and move to a Private Island and be free of stupid software. I want my software to be SMART. MWUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
Besides, I have a life, I don't need to spend useless time tweaking a stupid peice of software just so I can use my damn mouse.
GO AHEAD MODERATORS!! DO YOUR WORST!! I WOULD RATHER THIS POST BE MODERATED DOWN TO THE WORST AREAS OF SLASHDOT's POST HELL THAN TO HAVE IT IGNORED!! I'M TIRED OF ALL THE STUPID UNIX-IS-THE-BEST, OPEN-SOURCE-CAN'T-BE-BEAT POSTS. SLASHDOT NEEDS TO GET ITS HEAD EXAMINED, AND SOME PEOPLE WITH LESS RESPECT FOR THE ALMIGHTY GPL, AND THE HOLY LINUX.
C-Net owns some really weird domains that make you wonder about them... Try going to ActiveX.com (Microsoft even has a link to ActiveX.com!! I'm surprised they didn't sue...), and you will get a small portion of the C-Net Download.com Library... I think the only competitor to C-Net's Domain Monopoly is Internet.com's smaller number of Domain Names. I bet Internet.com will be the next C-Net buyout.
Here Here!! I've been an on-again, off-again X-Men fan, having first been exposed to it by Fox's animated series (which is a shame that it had to end it all), and have read only a few of the comics, but I must say, the all-pervading feeling I got from the franchise is that everything is not Black or White. For instance, one of my favorite animated arcs happened in which a time traveller from the X-men's future, who was fighting in a horrible apocalyptic war, jumps back and tries to kill Wolverine, who he thinks was responsible for the war. He was a classic anti-villian. Whereas DC throws us concrete Black and White relationships: Batman vs. Evil; Superman vs. Evil, I think that Marvel has given us a more realistic series in the X-Men, and I am proud to say that I learnt some early Philosophy and Morality from X-Men, and I hope this movie will help teach it to others.:-)
Oh come on, get a bloody anime category or go somewhere else for your anime news. I'm sick of all this idiotic anime talk... at least with a category of its own I can ignore it and don't even get the stupid headlines in my way!!!
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that NASA's testing methods are much more vigorous compared to the Russians. The russians had, what? Two manned protons blow compared to one Challenger, which happened due mostly to freak weather conditions (of course, you could say that Russia is one big freak weather condition, but I don't want to start a flame war here). I think NASA values it's astronauts more than Russia values it's cosmonauts (insert bad russian accent: "We just lost another Proton sir... oh, and five cosmonauts." "Go down to the 'Warehouse' (turns out to be a local bar) and get us a few more.":-) I think it's just the 'Made in USA' attitude of quality that shows that we Americans have more 'quality' than the next country... even the Japanese can burgle our computer designs and build a decent console system, but I would rather buy my next computer from Gateway! (of course, most of the chips would be Taiwanese... but that is another matter altogether...)
I am not the person who wrote the orginal post, but I may have insight into the thought processes going through that person's head. Like you mentioned, all of the major desktops are derived from the original Xerox PARC GUI, and basically for the past couple of decades 'improvements' have mostly come in the form of 'ooh!'-style look changes and copying the other guy, and so we have a big feedback loop where nothing really innovative has, and possibly can, enter. So maybe the current GUI architecture is not the best. On the other hand, how could we make a GUI simpler and more intuitive, without scrapping everything we've learned (the mouse cursor, the text cursor, the window), as some researchers have wanted to do (Some of the researchers of so-called 'visual computing' say that the GUI of the future will be you waving at the computer's camera 'eye-ball'... I don't think so because personally, I don't want to look like a dork when using my computer.). I don't think that Microsoft/Apple are in a position to really experiment with the GUI without getting killed by angry consumers. I don't think KDE/et al are in a real position to do it, either, without dropping off the face of the Earth. Basically, the next GUI is going to have to come from some unknown fourth party with guts... too bad Xerox PARC long gave up 'real' GUI research for researching other, weirder stuff...
The problem is that we've reached an innovation-less circle of annoyance when it comes to Operating Systems and their GUIs... Apple's copying Microsoft... Microsoft's copying Apple... everyone else is copying those two. Of course, sure, a few new bells in whistles get added into this feedback loop, but mostly, there is no real innovation.
Ha! You missed my point altogether! First of all, most newbies don't telnet or run servers... I was talking about the bonified Newbie that has just bought there first computer and has no place to go (other then Microsoft's $ad attempt or PGP which is so increbly confusing to the average newbie...) for true net privacy. Almost all of the Open Source junk out there is *impossible* for the true Newbie, and as a person who deals with a lot of Newbies, I think that a lot of the people here on/. are incredibly thick when it comes to dealing with Newbies...
Slashdot Mirror
The modern docx format (as well as OpenOffice's odt format) is just a zip archive of mostly XML files. Unzip the docx and xmllint the XML and you can get nice textual diffs. Rezip to go back to WYSIWYG.
I even wrote a simple tool to automate the process called musdex. It's on PyPI.
Even better: many useful "official" widgets are available as Open Source in the Silverlight toolkit:
http://codeplex.com/Silverlight
This toolkit is great even for WPF developers because they are liberally licensed (the MS-PL is like the BSD or MIT/X11 licenses) and thus quite customizable for WPF applications that need to do things that normal WPF controls can't quite handle.
Mono has had an implementation of the WPF subset most commonly referred to as WPF/E in Moonlight for some time. (1.0 is out there and very usable; 2.0 is in beta.) WPF/E is a strong enough subset that converting a WPF app may not be "trivial", it is doable, and it is "straightforward". WPF/E is also a "good standard" at this point because, in addition to Moonlight, Microsoft has took upon themselves to deliver official WPF/E support for Mac OS X (in Silverlight).
mrpacmanjel: It is unfortunate that the mono is so closely associated with Windows, if the mono team had created/implemented a completely new set of cross-platform libraries (that bore no relation to Microsoft's framework) it would be more accepted.
In addition to the (ECMA-standardized) Base Class Library (BCL) and several .NET-compatibility libraries (including System.Windows.Forms), Mono has a full stack of its own APIs/libraries based upon Gnome's cross-platform libraries. The Release Notes has a good overview of these inherently cross-platform Mono APIs (that work in both Mono and .NET on every platform supported by both):
http://www.mono-project.com/Release_Notes_Mono_2.0#Mono_APIs
Cool applications such as Banshee, Tomboy and Tasque use these APIs for cross-platform happiness.
Pedantic: CIL binary is just as cross-platform as JVM binary, and from what I've heard Mono is pretty spot on with binary compatibility with Windows .NET.
.NET, and that most new development will be C#, so as more C# gets mixed into the Office codebase the higher the possibility of a "purer" Office.
Therefore, should MS port Office entirely to C#, Linux binaries would not be necessary so long as Office followed good coding standards (Path.Seperator) and mono supported all of the libraries used by Office. In such an eventuality as Microsoft does indeed release Office for C#, Office should run out of the box on Linux!
Now, for those naysayers who believe that that eventuallity will ever happen: C# Office opens the possibility of one single codebase and a consolidated development group for both Office and Office: Mac (via the good work of, say, Mono and Cocoa#, for instance). This actually makes good business sense, and I will argue that there are at least some brainiacs in Microsoft who know that...
The immediate stopper on such a thing is how much Microsoft values the existing codebases over smaller development teams and entirely merged codebases. On the other hand, Microsoft has already admitted long term commitments to
If you are using Firefox 1.0 you can go to Tools > Options > Advanced... and underneath the "Tabbed Browsing" header you'll find a group box with radio buttons allowing you to default Firefox to opening new tabs in the last Firefox window. I was quite pleased at this new option.
My University went through several names for the Computer Engineering and Computer Science department (current name). Probably most interesting is that the CECS department derives from and was once the "Applied Mathematics" department.
"I love to reinvent the wheel with every new project. I'm going to throw out all of those C and C++ function libraries and classes I've built so I can now reimplement them in Mono."
.NET in general) have something of a large focus on "P/Invoke" aka "Platform Invoke" aka "I have this C/C++ library and I know the function I want to call so call the damn thing".
.NET and Mono JIT compile virtual machine bytecodes to native bytecodes and run at comparable speeds. Sure, a GC slows things down, but I'd rather have a good GC than "fastest performance possible".
.NET and Mono as a platform is that you can compile any language to Intermediate Language bytecode. Microsoft provides (for free as in beer) an optimizing C++ compiler that can (and does) target the CLR. (Of course, to use more of the fun stuff like GC and whatnot you have to delve into the "Managed Extensions for C++", which the latest "2.0" release is in the process of ECMA standardization.) Bytecode for bytecode, if you build the app with cross-platform in mind it will run in Mono. The Mono Project, I've heard, has been experimenting with Open Source C++ compilers in the hopes of building their own similar compiler.
Unlike Java, C# (and
"I hate fast code! How am I supposed to write slow code in C++ when my users have a 3 GHz Pentium 4s? Oh, I know, I'll use a virtual machine!"
Why is a virtual machine necessarily slower?
"I love to learn. In fact, now that I've mastered C and C++, I'm going to throw away all of my effort invested in these languages and learn a new one."
Reread the earlier mention of P/Invoke. Now, comes the fun part, another focus of
"Mono is not sufficiently different in terms of ease of programming to justify the switch from C++. In fact, as the example code demonstrated, Mono apps often involve more lines of code simply because every single detail of the GUI can, and must be, set by the programmer. In Windows, 9 times out of 10 I can simply use the defaults and everything comes out fine."
Who cares? It all comes down to GUI Builders. I certainly don't want to build windows by hand in source code. I've got better things to do with my time.
Microsoft isn't some demonic force, even they have to answer to their customers ("Joe Developer" using Visual Studio). What is it that they can break that wouldn't piss developers off? Better yet, what is it they could break, not piss developers off, and keep out of OS developers' hands?
.NET), they get in a shitload of hell from anyone using the BCLs. Even then, with the Fusion (GAC) versioning system, all versions sit side by side, so if Mono is compatible with Framework 1.1 and Microsoft breaks things in Framework 2.0 (which they will, as Longhorn steps up to bat), existing 1.1 apps will continue to run, and Mono just has to work at adding 2.0 support.
.NET world.
Nothing.
If they change the BCL (Base Class Library, the main APIs of
If they change CIL (Common Intermediate Language) they piss off their development partners, and any developers working on compilers to CIL. This was one of the major goals of CIL in the first place, and I don't see Microsoft pissing these people off. Also, consider that Microsoft alone has to keep up with a large number of CIL-targeted compilers (C#, VB.Net, C++, JScript, Regex, SQL, to name a few).
Don't let worries about what Microsoft _might_ do threaten you from looking at what they have done with the
Personally, I think SWT looks like 95-era Windows with some purple (why purple??!!) thrown in for an attempt at some sort of style. On top of that, SWT clashes with almost every other OS look and feel out there, and doesn't adapt to native LNFs.
Finally, it has been my experience that the SWT -> AWT pipeline is quite a bit slower than native window calls, and I've got better stuff to do with my time than wait for SWT to redraw my entire window every time I occlude it slightly! (As SWT apparently doesn't like to listen to the Regions provided by the Paint message, and even if it did, it would have to traverse the entire Object tree to figure which controls need repainting...)
It has been a rumor that IJ4 would be in Atlantis since LEC released Fate of Atlantis which still is the greates Indiana Jones computer game made. Also, I've heard the hold-up isn't Lucas, but Paramount this time. Paramount owns the rights to the IJ films, and has been bugging Lucas/Spielburg/et al for years, but this year things changed as Tomb Raider and MI2 are much bigger (and "cheaper") franchises for Paramount.
WorldMaker
Er... maybe you don't understand... you flip enough frames in front of the viewer and the mind fills in the gaps. EVERYTHING WORKS THIS WAY. There is not a single necessary second of processing power needed to change the frames in any way to create the Matrix style effect. Theoretically, those old Black and White directors could have done the same effect. Their problem was the fact that cameras were VERY expensive at the time, so you couldn't fill a room with 100s of the things. No morphing. No computer time. Simple cut, copy and paste. (with actual scissors in the case of something like the Matrix, as Hollywood _STILL_ uses analog tech)
WorldMaker
Er... 1) This has already been /.ed: here mentioning the MSN end of the partnership. 2) Starband is really just the new name of what used to be Gilat 2 Home and what currently is my major ISP...
WorldMaker
Robyn said something about how outdated the lop web site was, and has apparrantly been back at Cyan working on MUDPIE... so he took down the web page.
WorldMaker
It wasn't the Republican vs. Whig, it was the Democratic-Republican vs. Whig, and the D-R was closer to the modern Republican party than the Democrat. Also, there have been other parties over the years like "Federalist". But, I think Washington was right when he said the America doesn't need parties. Of course, he was the only unafilliated pres we had. Let me ask you this, though... all everyone is talking about with the elections is "parties" this and "parties" that, but does anyone ever really throw one??
WorldMaker
I thought the equation X/500 home user bandwith compared to the X/2 that may be possible... I seriously doubt that this will 'blow up' the Internet. Truth be, I think that this will be the direction the Internet will take. Most companies are only thinking in the Client/Server method, and have been thinking that way since the 1970s. Microsoft has had shifts in both directions. Linux is firmly rooted ('scuse the pun) in Client/Server. I think the future can be seen in how successful, powerful, and useful Napster, Gnutella, SETI, Distributed.net, and clones have been. Why not distribute?? It cuts costs, saves money, and gives us home users the incentive to catch up in our computer technology versus the hosting department at Yahoo! or other web host. It is load balancing at the best it can be. Why load balance only internally when you can theoretically have an unlimited supply of load balancing?
Of course, distributing the whole Internet would require a rewrite and rethinking of everything from Apache to Internet Explorer to TCP/IP itself. But think about... most users already have a cache of recently visited links. Imagine searching through Explorertella for 'yahoo.com' and heading to your brothers computer which has the latest cache and lowest latency. Next you click on a category... your brother doesn't have that particular page cached, but a quick search turns up that his buddy accross the street has it. Certainly, you may eventually end up on Yahoo's main server, but with a well built system with a decent cache system and certificate (expirations) system, the user will also get the fastest possible link, and the servers will have much less bandwith.
Of course, I could be wrong, but I doubt it.
WorldMaker
Hope I'm not too late. Mod me up, if you want. Anyhey, my family is one of few testing the G-2-H connection. I must say that it has been a great experience... I've got it shared about my network here at home (yeehaw!). I have found that at times it has been faster (yes, I say faster) than the DSL that they compare it too [A nearby business that I spend time at has a DSL] under my own incredibly weird benchmarks. At MediaBytes.com (I think that is right...), where George Lucas in Love is hosted, I can (and do) run it at the 700k (T1++) speed on the main (server) computer and it runs great. On a DSL, the best I could get was 150k.
WorldMaker
Okay Moderators, I've taken the flame bait. Moderate this down!! Come on!! I've only a got a few Karma points anyway, might as well take them away by cursing your precious Open Source and your damn UNIX!
I hate UNIX. I despise UNIX. I would rather work in DOS than spend another day in X Windows.
The whole platform sucks, although, from what I have heard about Miquel's post, he doesn't explain as well as you might find at Don Hopkins' page (here).
At first I thought that I might like UNIX, heck, I liked DOS back when I used it consistently. Then I actually tried using it. Ha! Using it? More like be used by it. I REINSTALLED THE DAMN THING FOUR OF FIVE TIMES BEFORE I GOT IT EVEN TO REMOTELY RESPOND TO THE HARDWARE!! I found it impossible to get a PS2 mouse working and had to resort to dumb serial mouse! In order to use a peice of software you have to write the equivalent of War in Peace in a bizarre techno-reliogious language that even the Druids wouldn't claim. The software is always IDIOTIC just so the no-life jerk who actually learns how to use every facet of it gets a kick from his superiority complex. Not to mention X Windows: X Windows is the mother of all of these idiot software designs. Not only to have to write the equivalent of War and Peace, but you have to do it backwards with eyes closed! I AM A GEEK, BUT I DON'T NEED IDIOTIC SOFTWARE TO FEEL SMART.
Sheesh... and Slashdot is full of you GPLamers who have GPL shrines in their basements. Seriously, as a Geek who deals with newbies on a continual basis, I wonder whether you GPLamers like building stupid software on purpouse, or is the lack of Sun melts some of your brain when it comes to enjoying the idiotically arcane and inane. I DON'T USE ANY OPEN SOURCE SOFTWARE IN MY DAY-TO-DAY WORK, AND I DON'T PLAN TOO!! I use Windows everyday, and don't see that changing anytime soon.
One these days I'll just create my own Operating System and move to a Private Island and be free of stupid software. I want my software to be SMART. MWUHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!
Besides, I have a life, I don't need to spend useless time tweaking a stupid peice of software just so I can use my damn mouse.
GO AHEAD MODERATORS!! DO YOUR WORST!! I WOULD RATHER THIS POST BE MODERATED DOWN TO THE WORST AREAS OF SLASHDOT's POST HELL THAN TO HAVE IT IGNORED!! I'M TIRED OF ALL THE STUPID UNIX-IS-THE-BEST, OPEN-SOURCE-CAN'T-BE-BEAT POSTS. SLASHDOT NEEDS TO GET ITS HEAD EXAMINED, AND SOME PEOPLE WITH LESS RESPECT FOR THE ALMIGHTY GPL, AND THE HOLY LINUX.
WorldMaker
C-Net owns some really weird domains that make you wonder about them... Try going to ActiveX.com (Microsoft even has a link to ActiveX.com!! I'm surprised they didn't sue...), and you will get a small portion of the C-Net Download.com Library... I think the only competitor to C-Net's Domain Monopoly is Internet.com's smaller number of Domain Names. I bet Internet.com will be the next C-Net buyout.
WorldMaker
Here Here!! I've been an on-again, off-again X-Men fan, having first been exposed to it by Fox's animated series (which is a shame that it had to end it all), and have read only a few of the comics, but I must say, the all-pervading feeling I got from the franchise is that everything is not Black or White. For instance, one of my favorite animated arcs happened in which a time traveller from the X-men's future, who was fighting in a horrible apocalyptic war, jumps back and tries to kill Wolverine, who he thinks was responsible for the war. He was a classic anti-villian. Whereas DC throws us concrete Black and White relationships: Batman vs. Evil; Superman vs. Evil, I think that Marvel has given us a more realistic series in the X-Men, and I am proud to say that I learnt some early Philosophy and Morality from X-Men, and I hope this movie will help teach it to others. :-)
:-)
Perhaps X-Men really is a religion of sorts...
WorldMaker
Oh come on, get a bloody anime category or go somewhere else for your anime news. I'm sick of all this idiotic anime talk... at least with a category of its own I can ignore it and don't even get the stupid headlines in my way!!!
WorldMaker
I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that NASA's testing methods are much more vigorous compared to the Russians. The russians had, what? Two manned protons blow compared to one Challenger, which happened due mostly to freak weather conditions (of course, you could say that Russia is one big freak weather condition, but I don't want to start a flame war here). I think NASA values it's astronauts more than Russia values it's cosmonauts (insert bad russian accent: "We just lost another Proton sir... oh, and five cosmonauts." "Go down to the 'Warehouse' (turns out to be a local bar) and get us a few more." :-) I think it's just the 'Made in USA' attitude of quality that shows that we Americans have more 'quality' than the next country... even the Japanese can burgle our computer designs and build a decent console system, but I would rather buy my next computer from Gateway! (of course, most of the chips would be Taiwanese... but that is another matter altogether...)
WorldMaker
I am not the person who wrote the orginal post, but I may have insight into the thought processes going through that person's head. Like you mentioned, all of the major desktops are derived from the original Xerox PARC GUI, and basically for the past couple of decades 'improvements' have mostly come in the form of 'ooh!'-style look changes and copying the other guy, and so we have a big feedback loop where nothing really innovative has, and possibly can, enter. So maybe the current GUI architecture is not the best. On the other hand, how could we make a GUI simpler and more intuitive, without scrapping everything we've learned (the mouse cursor, the text cursor, the window), as some researchers have wanted to do (Some of the researchers of so-called 'visual computing' say that the GUI of the future will be you waving at the computer's camera 'eye-ball'... I don't think so because personally, I don't want to look like a dork when using my computer.). I don't think that Microsoft/Apple are in a position to really experiment with the GUI without getting killed by angry consumers. I don't think KDE/et al are in a real position to do it, either, without dropping off the face of the Earth. Basically, the next GUI is going to have to come from some unknown fourth party with guts... too bad Xerox PARC long gave up 'real' GUI research for researching other, weirder stuff...
WorldMaker
The problem is that we've reached an innovation-less circle of annoyance when it comes to Operating Systems and their GUIs... Apple's copying Microsoft... Microsoft's copying Apple... everyone else is copying those two. Of course, sure, a few new bells in whistles get added into this feedback loop, but mostly, there is no real innovation.
WorldMaker
Ha! You missed my point altogether! First of all, most newbies don't telnet or run servers... I was talking about the bonified Newbie that has just bought there first computer and has no place to go (other then Microsoft's $ad attempt or PGP which is so increbly confusing to the average newbie...) for true net privacy. Almost all of the Open Source junk out there is *impossible* for the true Newbie, and as a person who deals with a lot of Newbies, I think that a lot of the people here on /. are incredibly thick when it comes to dealing with Newbies...
WorldMaker