That just means they've chosen not to reveal his second head in the trailer.
I worded slightly incorrectly. The "second head in his nostril" rumor was started when early previews distinctly showed a one-headed Zaphod when the CGI hadn't been finished yet. I'm sure they've got it done now, but I was talking about the origins of the nostril rumor.
P.S. That may be the only time in my life I ever get to write "origins of the nostril rumor" in a valid context. Hooray for Slashdot.
I think Zaphod's second head is inside his nostril, or something like that.
That was a silly web rumor that everyone decided to believe and spread around for no reason. Zaphod's second head simply hasn't been created in CG yet. Several interviews have come out in the past few months explaining all about this movie, but unfortunately, Slashdot seems to have rejected all those submissions!
I remember seeing something on the making of X-Men, and one of the designers said yellow spandex looks great in a comic book, but it looks stupid on screen.
They were headed toward basing off the original costume design, but they did screen tests with yellow costumes, and the color was flashing around during action scenes and made it confusing to follow. Spider-Man gets away with it because red and blue are great, darker colors and not as bright as yellow.
Of course, it doesn't affect us OS X users either way.:)
It's nice they "may" be including free anti-spyware, but it's sad there was a need in the first place. Spyware typically hooks into flaws in the system. A big problem is the way Windows loves to run as Administrator all the time. In this day and age, it's just unacceptable. Come on, Microsoft, it's 2005 now. Time to force people to pay attention to user privileges.
Maybe the best thing for Usenet is to go "underground," so to speak, and have traffic die so the noise level diminishes, and at least a little bit of the former glory might return.
It's just my opinion, but I think if people stopped using older languages like C and moved to more self-documenting languanges, things would be a lot easier. For instance, Objective-C self-documents its own methods (i.e. "[object doThis:that forThis:that];").
What makes you say that? They've been working on Longhorn for years now (through delay after delay). Everything is going to be running.NET--this has been known for quite a while. Visual Studio will happily compile IL code using C++. It will be interesting to see the effects on security issues with everything running under managed, "trusted" code.
Everyone knew IE7 would be shipping with Longhorn (they've been saying that since the beginning). This isn't really news. However, it's not surprising the way Slashdotters are reacting to the news. Is it really that personal for some of you people? They're just web browsers, and Firefox is hardly flawless. I'm interested in seeing what they put out. It will probably be fully hooked into.NET.
Cite your "nearly 12%" statistic. Are you referring to the techie site logs that Slashdot linked to and claimed as global web statistics?
Firefox is hardly taking over the market. A simple glance at my company's site actually shows IE gaining since last November. Google's Zeitgeist also confirmed this before the numbers were taken down.
IE7 is getting updated to go along with the rest of the.NET stuff. It'll require the.NET framework.
I love "you are obviously" statements. As a matter of fact, I have worked for two major IT infrastructures going between two related companies.
Again, the only fiery discussion about EULAs I ever see is on Slashdot. I can only surmise it's because major companies use EULA and legalese themselves and know the reasons behind them and so don't mind. All I know is, none of our managers cared, we didn't care, and we got our work done. The Microsoft guy is right--Red Hat and others have the same kinds of EULAs.
He seemed reasonable to me. I agree that the aggressive, emotional discussion should be done away with. Linux wants to be something more than a hobbyists' passion, but it's still treated like one by its own users.
Some of the questions were rather silly. Rob asked him what he does about popups? Come on, SP2 has been out for what, over half a year now? When it came out, Slashdot ran about two articles a day on it. And he still didn't know it came with a built-in pop-up blocker?
I would have liked some meatier questions. Like what the guy thinks of some specific cases of Microsoft "business strategy" from the past or what weaknesses he sees in the Windows GUI.Instead, it was EULA this, EULA that. I think Slashdotters are the only people so worked up over EULAs, and it just bores me! Where are the questions on Longhorn and what they plan to accomplish with it? I don't care what Linux distro Rob uses or how his software didn't cost him anything, you know?
This is exactly what I was saying. ADO.NET, etc are not open standards.
But the rest of.NET is. If your issue is with high-level stuff like ADO.NET, okay. But you questioned that.NET is an open standard, and I referenced the Mono FAQ to show that a lot of it is, including the base infrastructure.
The.NET Framework is divided in two parts: the ECMA/ISO covered technologies and the other technologies developed on top of it like ADO.NET, ASP.NET and Windows.Forms. Mono implements the ECMA/ISO covered parts, as well as being a project that aims to implement the higher level blocks like ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows.Forms.
...were unclear? Mono implements the ECMA/ISO covered technologies of.NET--an open standard. In addition, it also attempts to implement that which is not covered, which is the part some people have some sort of problem with for some reason (I guess they don't have a problem with projects like Wine). However, there are already replacements for those high-level blocks, like GTK#, so it doesn't really matter.
No, forking is when you create an alternate branch off an existing technology. Unless Microsoft has implemented their own Cocoa#, GTK#, and so on in.NET, I don't know why you'd think it's a fork of anything.
The nuts and bolts of.NET fall under the ECMA submission. What the controversy is over is the Windows.Forms, ADO.NET, and other related technologies built on top of it. Even without those, people could freely use Mono with other technologies like GTK#, Cocoa#, or whatever.
"Question 131: Could patents be used to completely disable Mono (either submarine patents filed now, or changes made by Microsoft specifically to create patent problems)?
First some background information.
The.NET Framework is divided in two parts: the ECMA/ISO covered technologies and the other technologies developed on top of it like ADO.NET, ASP.NET and Windows.Forms.
Mono implements the ECMA/ISO covered parts, as well as being a project that aims to implement the higher level blocks like ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows.Forms.
The Mono project has gone beyond both of those components and has developed and integrated third party class libraries, the most important being: Debugging APIs, integration with the Gnome platform (Accessibility, Pango rendering, Gdk/Gtk, Glade, GnomeUI), Mozilla, OpenGL, extensive database support (Microsoft only supports a couple of providers out of the box, while Mono has support for 11 different providers), our POSIX integration libraries and finally the embedded API (used to add scripting to applications and host the CLI, or for example as an embedded runtime in Apache).
The core of the.NET Framework, and what has been patented by Microsoft falls under the ECMA/ISO submission. Jim Miller at Microsoft has made a statement on the patents covering ISO/ECMA, (he is one of the inventors listed in the patent): here.
Basically a grant is given to anyone who want to implement those components for free and for any purpose.
The controversial elements are the ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows.Forms subsets. Those are convenient for people who need full compatibility with the Windows platform, but are not required for the open source Mono platform, nor integration with today's Mono's rich support of Linux.
The Mono strategy for dealing with these technologies is as follows: (1) work around the patent by using a different implementation technique that retains the API, but changes the mechanism; if that is not possible, we would (2) remove the pieces of code that were covered by those patents, and also (3) find prior art that would render the patent useless.
Not providing a patented capability would weaken the interoperability, but it would still provide the free software / open source software community with good development tools, which is the primary reason for developing Mono.
The patents do not apply in countries where software patents are not allowed.
For Linux server and desktop development, we only need the ECMA components, and things that we have developed (like Gtk#) or Apache integration.
Question 132: Is Mono only an implementation of the.NET Framework?
Mono implements both the.NET Framework, as well as plenty of class libraries that are either UNIX specific, Gnome specific, or that are not part of the.NET Framework but people find useful. Credits"
Additionally, I don't see any objections to Java being used in the Linux world. And yet:
- Both are backed by software giants - Both companies have traditionally been fiercely proprietary - Both of them offer a new language/platform. - While C# is now an ECMA standard, Java is still architected by Sun's engineers (even though Sun can claim that they have a "community" process for extending the language/specs) - Both have patents of various aspects of the implementation. - Both have proprietary implementations in the market. - Both have evangelists eager to win converts to the new platform. - Both the corporations are profit driven.
Actually, this has been the commonly known rumor for a while now. PS3 is expected early next year.
Meanwhile, Nintendo was waiting on the release schedules of these guys to decide when to release the Revolution. They wanted to avoid what happened with the Gamecube by coming out too late. It's expected that the Revolution will be coming out early next year.
All three will be unveiled at this year's E3. If there was ever an E3 to be at, this would be the one (I want to see the new Zelda game).
The.NET API is an open standard. The best thing Microsoft could ever do for Mono would be to sue it. The publicity and attention and droves of users/developers it would get would be monumental. They'll ignore it.
If what you say is true, and all those issues are "resolved," than we'd be seeing a Linux desktop marketshare higher than its current meager 1% (according to the numbers from Zeitgeist before it stopped reporting them).
Just for comparison, OS X was 5%.
It seems you just declare his credibility "shot to hell" without actually explaining why. Such dismissiveness isn't good for progress, and it's about time people started getting self-critical about their projects. That's how the commercial guys do it--it's all about "what can we do better for the user?" This thing is never gonna get off the ground if it remains a hobbyist endeavor for other hobbyists all its life.
I've mentioned this before. Whenever someone mentions how fragmented Linux on the desktop is, someone references Freedesktop like it's some sort of universal answer. Meanwhile, Linux on the desktop is still fragmented.
Everything is "this will exist" or "this has the potential to." What about right now? It's been eight years since I first started following Linux on the desktop, and every year has sounded exactly the same. Just saying.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes. As I said, the nostril rumor was wrong.
That just means they've chosen not to reveal his second head in the trailer.
I worded slightly incorrectly. The "second head in his nostril" rumor was started when early previews distinctly showed a one-headed Zaphod when the CGI hadn't been finished yet. I'm sure they've got it done now, but I was talking about the origins of the nostril rumor.
P.S. That may be the only time in my life I ever get to write "origins of the nostril rumor" in a valid context. Hooray for Slashdot.
I think Zaphod's second head is inside his nostril, or something like that.
That was a silly web rumor that everyone decided to believe and spread around for no reason. Zaphod's second head simply hasn't been created in CG yet. Several interviews have come out in the past few months explaining all about this movie, but unfortunately, Slashdot seems to have rejected all those submissions!
I remember seeing something on the making of X-Men, and one of the designers said yellow spandex looks great in a comic book, but it looks stupid on screen.
They were headed toward basing off the original costume design, but they did screen tests with yellow costumes, and the color was flashing around during action scenes and made it confusing to follow. Spider-Man gets away with it because red and blue are great, darker colors and not as bright as yellow.
Of course, it doesn't affect us OS X users either way. :)
It's nice they "may" be including free anti-spyware, but it's sad there was a need in the first place. Spyware typically hooks into flaws in the system. A big problem is the way Windows loves to run as Administrator all the time. In this day and age, it's just unacceptable. Come on, Microsoft, it's 2005 now. Time to force people to pay attention to user privileges.
I just finished compiling it an hour ago, and then I see this announcement on Slashdot! This always happens.
Maybe the best thing for Usenet is to go "underground," so to speak, and have traffic die so the noise level diminishes, and at least a little bit of the former glory might return.
It's just my opinion, but I think if people stopped using older languages like C and moved to more self-documenting languanges, things would be a lot easier. For instance, Objective-C self-documents its own methods (i.e. "[object doThis:that forThis:that];").
Okay, so they temporarily dropped the default!
Updating system components to newer versions, even though they are tied into the system, isn't exactly something new or impossible.
What makes you say that? They've been working on Longhorn for years now (through delay after delay). Everything is going to be running .NET--this has been known for quite a while. Visual Studio will happily compile IL code using C++. It will be interesting to see the effects on security issues with everything running under managed, "trusted" code.
Everyone knew IE7 would be shipping with Longhorn (they've been saying that since the beginning). This isn't really news. However, it's not surprising the way Slashdotters are reacting to the news. Is it really that personal for some of you people? They're just web browsers, and Firefox is hardly flawless. I'm interested in seeing what they put out. It will probably be fully hooked into .NET.
Cite your "nearly 12%" statistic. Are you referring to the techie site logs that Slashdot linked to and claimed as global web statistics?
.NET stuff. It'll require the .NET framework.
Firefox is hardly taking over the market. A simple glance at my company's site actually shows IE gaining since last November. Google's Zeitgeist also confirmed this before the numbers were taken down.
IE7 is getting updated to go along with the rest of the
They "temporarily" dropped support, then. Same thing.
I love "you are obviously" statements. As a matter of fact, I have worked for two major IT infrastructures going between two related companies.
Again, the only fiery discussion about EULAs I ever see is on Slashdot. I can only surmise it's because major companies use EULA and legalese themselves and know the reasons behind them and so don't mind. All I know is, none of our managers cared, we didn't care, and we got our work done. The Microsoft guy is right--Red Hat and others have the same kinds of EULAs.
He seemed reasonable to me. I agree that the aggressive, emotional discussion should be done away with. Linux wants to be something more than a hobbyists' passion, but it's still treated like one by its own users.
Some of the questions were rather silly. Rob asked him what he does about popups? Come on, SP2 has been out for what, over half a year now? When it came out, Slashdot ran about two articles a day on it. And he still didn't know it came with a built-in pop-up blocker?
I would have liked some meatier questions. Like what the guy thinks of some specific cases of Microsoft "business strategy" from the past or what weaknesses he sees in the Windows GUI.Instead, it was EULA this, EULA that. I think Slashdotters are the only people so worked up over EULAs, and it just bores me! Where are the questions on Longhorn and what they plan to accomplish with it? I don't care what Linux distro Rob uses or how his software didn't cost him anything, you know?
This is exactly what I was saying. ADO.NET, etc are not open standards.
.NET is. If your issue is with high-level stuff like ADO.NET, okay. But you questioned that .NET is an open standard, and I referenced the Mono FAQ to show that a lot of it is, including the base infrastructure.
But the rest of
What parts of...
.NET Framework is divided in two parts: the ECMA/ISO covered technologies and the other technologies developed on top of it like ADO.NET, ASP.NET and Windows.Forms. Mono implements the ECMA/ISO covered parts, as well as being a project that aims to implement the higher level blocks like ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows.Forms.
...were unclear? Mono implements the ECMA/ISO covered technologies of .NET--an open standard. In addition, it also attempts to implement that which is not covered, which is the part some people have some sort of problem with for some reason (I guess they don't have a problem with projects like Wine). However, there are already replacements for those high-level blocks, like GTK#, so it doesn't really matter.
The
That's called forking isn't it?
.NET, I don't know why you'd think it's a fork of anything.
No, forking is when you create an alternate branch off an existing technology. Unless Microsoft has implemented their own Cocoa#, GTK#, and so on in
The nuts and bolts of .NET fall under the ECMA submission. What the controversy is over is the Windows.Forms, ADO.NET, and other related technologies built on top of it. Even without those, people could freely use Mono with other technologies like GTK#, Cocoa#, or whatever.
From the licensing FAQ section of Mono's own website:
.NET Framework is divided in two parts: the ECMA/ISO covered technologies and the other technologies developed on top of it like ADO.NET, ASP.NET and Windows.Forms.
.NET Framework, and what has been patented by Microsoft falls under the ECMA/ISO submission. Jim Miller at Microsoft has made a statement on the patents covering ISO/ECMA, (he is one of the inventors listed in the patent): here.
.NET Framework?
.NET Framework, as well as plenty of class libraries that are either UNIX specific, Gnome specific, or that are not part of the .NET Framework but people find useful.
"Question 131: Could patents be used to completely disable Mono (either submarine patents filed now, or changes made by Microsoft specifically to create patent problems)?
First some background information.
The
Mono implements the ECMA/ISO covered parts, as well as being a project that aims to implement the higher level blocks like ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows.Forms.
The Mono project has gone beyond both of those components and has developed and integrated third party class libraries, the most important being: Debugging APIs, integration with the Gnome platform (Accessibility, Pango rendering, Gdk/Gtk, Glade, GnomeUI), Mozilla, OpenGL, extensive database support (Microsoft only supports a couple of providers out of the box, while Mono has support for 11 different providers), our POSIX integration libraries and finally the embedded API (used to add scripting to applications and host the CLI, or for example as an embedded runtime in Apache).
The core of the
Basically a grant is given to anyone who want to implement those components for free and for any purpose.
The controversial elements are the ASP.NET, ADO.NET and Windows.Forms subsets. Those are convenient for people who need full compatibility with the Windows platform, but are not required for the open source Mono platform, nor integration with today's Mono's rich support of Linux.
The Mono strategy for dealing with these technologies is as follows: (1) work around the patent by using a different implementation technique that retains the API, but changes the mechanism; if that is not possible, we would (2) remove the pieces of code that were covered by those patents, and also (3) find prior art that would render the patent useless.
Not providing a patented capability would weaken the interoperability, but it would still provide the free software / open source software community with good development tools, which is the primary reason for developing Mono.
The patents do not apply in countries where software patents are not allowed.
For Linux server and desktop development, we only need the ECMA components, and things that we have developed (like Gtk#) or Apache integration.
Question 132: Is Mono only an implementation of the
Mono implements both the
Credits"
Additionally, I don't see any objections to Java being used in the Linux world. And yet:
- Both are backed by software giants
- Both companies have traditionally been fiercely proprietary
- Both of them offer a new language/platform.
- While C# is now an ECMA standard, Java is still architected by Sun's engineers (even though Sun can claim that they have a "community" process
for extending the language/specs)
- Both have patents of various aspects of the implementation.
- Both have proprietary implementations in the market.
- Both have evangelists eager to win converts to the new platform.
- Both the corporations are profit driven.
So why is Java okay?
Actually, this has been the commonly known rumor for a while now. PS3 is expected early next year.
Meanwhile, Nintendo was waiting on the release schedules of these guys to decide when to release the Revolution. They wanted to avoid what happened with the Gamecube by coming out too late. It's expected that the Revolution will be coming out early next year.
All three will be unveiled at this year's E3. If there was ever an E3 to be at, this would be the one (I want to see the new Zelda game).
The .NET API is an open standard. The best thing Microsoft could ever do for Mono would be to sue it. The publicity and attention and droves of users/developers it would get would be monumental. They'll ignore it.
If what you say is true, and all those issues are "resolved," than we'd be seeing a Linux desktop marketshare higher than its current meager 1% (according to the numbers from Zeitgeist before it stopped reporting them).
Just for comparison, OS X was 5%.
It seems you just declare his credibility "shot to hell" without actually explaining why. Such dismissiveness isn't good for progress, and it's about time people started getting self-critical about their projects. That's how the commercial guys do it--it's all about "what can we do better for the user?" This thing is never gonna get off the ground if it remains a hobbyist endeavor for other hobbyists all its life.
I've mentioned this before. Whenever someone mentions how fragmented Linux on the desktop is, someone references Freedesktop like it's some sort of universal answer. Meanwhile, Linux on the desktop is still fragmented.
Everything is "this will exist" or "this has the potential to." What about right now? It's been eight years since I first started following Linux on the desktop, and every year has sounded exactly the same. Just saying.