E-Reader capable cards are released all the time. The last Super Mario Advance game--a remake of Super Mario Bros. 3--lets you load in levels, powerups, and demo runthroughs!
An apt moderation in an article about online journalism, in which some are bringing up the insane, broken moderation system...of course, I can't participate since I haven't gotten mod points ever since daring to reply to The Post.
Yes, editors, you piss me off--just the fact that for a site that constantly professes to be supportive of open free speech movements and the OSS community, you sure do run a closed-off, behind-the-scenes kind of operation. Modbombs, removal of moderation abilities for daring to reply to a post the editors didn't like, etc. Michael, I'm specifically looking at you here.
Kuro5hin has the right idea about openness, but the bizarre leftist slant the site has taken in recent years coupled with the fact that you have to get "sponsored" by an existing user to sign up means it's pretty much dead in the water.
I always hear about how "undeniably" right-wing Fox News is--constantly--but I never, ever see an example ever cited.
One liberal article I read once wrote that Dennis Miller had turned conservative, and in an aside mentioned that as a result he was one of Fox News' regular patrons. I only saw him on the channel a few times and never saw him anywhere else. If anything, that would tell me that the other channels are biased because they refused to offer the viewpoint that Fox News gave air time to. I don't see how having a guy on with some pro-Bush views suddenly makes the whole channel biased.
Besides, Hannity Colmes kicks ass, and I usually dislike annoying lefties.:)
The article didn't argue that nobody had the right to fork anything or that the GPL wasn't about freedom.
He merely said it wasn't a good idea to be backporting. Freedom also includes having opinions on the choices people make.
I love when someone criticizes something, and people jump on it claiming, "but they have the RIGHT to do that!" Nobody was saying they didn't have the right--they were just criticizing the choice they made with that right. Free opinion, man.
Re:Win32, Win32, and Win32 again
on
A Taste of Qt 4
·
· Score: 1
if you pay Trolltech, you get the Win32 sources. Qt is open (as in speech)
You can pay a Microsoft license and get their source code too. Does that mean they're open as in speech?
If you take the GPLed QT code and port it yourself to Windows using the GPL license and call it "FreeQT," would TrollTech sue you?
At the end of the day, I put my stuff out under the BSD license--the GPL imposes restrictions that, in my opinion, contradict the definition of being free.
The obvious implication is that we shouldn't bother so much with making things more usable because kids are smart enough to edit configuration themselves.
I replied and said he was the exception because I vehemently disagree with the mindset that things should be stupidly difficult simply because kids will learn it that way.
Not to mention that I have yet to meet a kid that would sit down and enjoy editing configuration files. Kids want to play--they want to install their little computers games and play them. Not edit rc.conf. Come on.
The mistake you make is assuming that Linux, which is essentially a patchwork system put together from pieces scavenged from here and there (with the GNU project being the biggest donator) and assembled in wildly varying configurations by different distributors...
And Windows isn't patchwork? What operating systems aren't patchwork? You just don't get to see Windows behind the scenes, the build process, the multiple components, etc.
With Linux, it's exposed if you want to deal with it. Or if you don't want to, don't--plenty of distros hide it from you.
It's not free, and it's not open source--it's always the same complaints leveled at almost every single commercial solution.
People, that money people use to pay for things actually goes back to the company and gives employees an incentive to sit there hacking away for 12 hours producing quality code and designing amazing new hardware. Volunteer work won't give you that kind of motivation (admit it, it won't), and it also won't let you quit your day job to devote all your time and energy to it.
Apple has the perfect balance--the kernel and rest of the OS is open source, but the stuff that really matters like their GUI and other software is proprietary closed. Ya have to buy it.
NT was always multi-user. Apple replaced its legacy OS with a new core, and Microsoft did just the same with Windows XP by introducing the NT line to the masses. Although I definitely think OS X is the better replacement! It's based on a Mach kernel with some BSD libraries and a userland environment in place.
DOS is a forgotten relic of the past--99% of the people I ask don't even know what DOS is or was.
Microsoft--grungy Seattle, gray overcast days all the time, endless rain, boring and monotonous. And so we get Windows 95 and its ugly, drab gray, it's squares and lines, it's awful linear mindset to doing things. All the way up until Windows XP, and they just make everything blue and green, which looks like an attempt to be the pretty thing that OS X is without really "getting it."
Apple--beautiful, sunny Cupertino. Pleasant weather, lovely parks, lots of color. And so we get iMacs, OS X, pleasant colors with curves and sleek designs...seriously, who else makes hardware that you could actually describe as "sexy" with a straight face? I admit it, I see a PowerBook or a desktop G5 and I think, "Man, that's enough to make me drool!" And their usability factor is through the roof. OS X is a breath of fresh air when all you've used is Windows (and KDE/GNOME).
Apple is expensive and doesn't have as much software. Obviously, there are different factors involved.
Yes, people will move onto something else. It's called "free market." People use what's cheapest, easiest, etc. Whatever has the most advantages.
This is somewhat irrelevant. My point was that people will drop piss-poor apps like a bad habit, no matter how much the programmer whines about how he shouldn't be a slave to users. Basically, I'm saying that programmers shouldn't bitch if people don't like their stuff. If you don't want to hear feedback, keep your app on your private network and don't release it into the wild--obviously there was an intention for widespread usage by putting it online.
I don't like being forced to download 5-10 new libraries when I want to install a simple little app. Dependency hell is still hell. It's just been made into automatic hell.
Nobody's gonna take you seriously if you tell them, "Oh, Linux software is easy to install, let me show you! Fire up the command line and type 'urpmi' or 'apt-get'..."
I seriously wonder why nobody has implemented binary installation/uninstallation routines for the Linux desktops yet. What's the damn holdup? Users need to be able to buy a Linux application from a store, take it home, and stick in a CD to get an autoplay installer.
Of course, to get that truly working well, you'd want a sane, robust programming library in the likes of.NET and Cocoa--none of this absolutely ridiculous QT/GTK/wxWindows/whatever nonsense that are merely hacks to get widgets up on X.
Get a sane library that retains backwards compatibility on the level of Windows (for a simple example, try loading up an RPM you got 5-7 years ago and see how well it goes...compared to Windows which still runs 95 and even most 3.1 apps happily) along with a sane installation/uninstallation routine so that the desktop can actually keep track of its own components, and things would really change, and I would stop using Windows as my main desktop.
Then, of course, we should do all this on Y-Windows when 1.0 comes out.;)
Let's all hope that the wizards among us hear them and provide us all with better information than we've got now.
Instead of more endless "docs," I'd rather the problems just get fixed so nobody needs to go online looking at more HOWTOs. I used to look at HOWTOs years ago and hated them, and I've avoided them ever since because not a single one has ever helped me--they've only confused me more.
I guess I also had issues with the very idea that the OS needed me to go online and look at HOWTOs in order to set it up--hell, often the problem was that I didn't know how to get the OS online, so a lot of good it did me.
I've installed plenty of distros in the past two years. Everything he said is true. Heck, Mandrake even wanted me to check the button for the 3-button mouse, then shake the cursor all over the screen to get it to work (huh?).
In Windows, it just knows when I plug the damned thing in.
Red Hat still asks you to partition things, and to mark out swap space, etc. It also asks you for a lot more network configuration than Windows does (Windows lets you just check "Typical settings"), generally asks for more questions on things like security levels, program groups to install, and so forth. Hell, check out the look on someone's face when they're asked to install a "bootloader"--what's more, their choices are things called "LILO" and "GRUB," typical OSS project names definitely showing how useful they are to people outside of development communities.:P
He's right--to say Linux is easier to install than Windows is insane fanboyism. It's just not true, and there's nothing wrong with admitting that so it can be addressed.
The mistake both you and Microsoft make is to assume that all the mind-numbing complexity of standard desktop systems is somehow necessary.
The mistake YOU make is assuming a self-healing system somehow equates to Windows, just because you don't like how Windows attempts its self-healing.
WTF does Windows have to do with Linux? Are you saying we can't do better? Or that we shouldn't try?
I don't get this incessant need for people to be resistant to change, progress, and making things easier. It's not going to make the CLR go away, don't worry.:P
However the programmer should be a slave to the user?
In a word...yes. Or else you fail usability.
Nobody's gonna act like your app is some gift from heaven. If users can't use it, they'll bitch and move on to something else. There are few things I hate more than programmer egos. YES, you're not God's greatest gift to computing. YES, if you're developing software you expect to be used publicly, you are slave to the users who will demand features, or else you're just another asshole who puts software out and then complains when people don't like it.
I don't get why so many Slashdotters assume their niche opinions represent the majority. They don't.
A lot of kids don't sit and program BASIC on their dad's C64s when they're 7 or 8. Maybe they trade baseball cards or play sports. Just because you did doesn't mean everyone does. Consequently, just because you sat down and spent hours learning how to program doesn't mean everyone else wants to.
Only on Slashdot does Microsoft giving away a free command-line compiler (which they've always done in the past along with the rest of the SDK) somehow mean "MS is worried they're losing their development community."
Losing it to what? Windows is 95+ of the market out there. As pointed out before, this isn't some "aggressive effort to get people to start developing.NET apps"--.NET has been a free download since the very beginning.
Slashdot Mirror
E-Reader capable cards are released all the time. The last Super Mario Advance game--a remake of Super Mario Bros. 3--lets you load in levels, powerups, and demo runthroughs!
Please, they didn't abandon squat.
It was sarcasm. Sigh.
An apt moderation in an article about online journalism, in which some are bringing up the insane, broken moderation system...of course, I can't participate since I haven't gotten mod points ever since daring to reply to The Post.
Yes, editors, you piss me off--just the fact that for a site that constantly professes to be supportive of open free speech movements and the OSS community, you sure do run a closed-off, behind-the-scenes kind of operation. Modbombs, removal of moderation abilities for daring to reply to a post the editors didn't like, etc. Michael, I'm specifically looking at you here.
Kuro5hin has the right idea about openness, but the bizarre leftist slant the site has taken in recent years coupled with the fact that you have to get "sponsored" by an existing user to sign up means it's pretty much dead in the water.
I can't count how many times I've heard how the toolkits don't use X efficiently.
Well, when the hell is it going to get fixed? I've been hearing this problem for years.
Y-Windows seems to fix all the problems with X anyway. I can't wait for 1.0.
I always hear about how "undeniably" right-wing Fox News is--constantly--but I never, ever see an example ever cited.
:)
One liberal article I read once wrote that Dennis Miller had turned conservative, and in an aside mentioned that as a result he was one of Fox News' regular patrons. I only saw him on the channel a few times and never saw him anywhere else. If anything, that would tell me that the other channels are biased because they refused to offer the viewpoint that Fox News gave air time to. I don't see how having a guy on with some pro-Bush views suddenly makes the whole channel biased.
Besides, Hannity Colmes kicks ass, and I usually dislike annoying lefties.
The article didn't argue that nobody had the right to fork anything or that the GPL wasn't about freedom.
He merely said it wasn't a good idea to be backporting. Freedom also includes having opinions on the choices people make.
I love when someone criticizes something, and people jump on it claiming, "but they have the RIGHT to do that!" Nobody was saying they didn't have the right--they were just criticizing the choice they made with that right. Free opinion, man.
if you pay Trolltech, you get the Win32 sources. Qt is open (as in speech)
You can pay a Microsoft license and get their source code too. Does that mean they're open as in speech?
If you take the GPLed QT code and port it yourself to Windows using the GPL license and call it "FreeQT," would TrollTech sue you?
At the end of the day, I put my stuff out under the BSD license--the GPL imposes restrictions that, in my opinion, contradict the definition of being free.
The obvious implication is that we shouldn't bother so much with making things more usable because kids are smart enough to edit configuration themselves.
I replied and said he was the exception because I vehemently disagree with the mindset that things should be stupidly difficult simply because kids will learn it that way.
Not to mention that I have yet to meet a kid that would sit down and enjoy editing configuration files. Kids want to play--they want to install their little computers games and play them. Not edit rc.conf. Come on.
Actually, "Typical Settings" sets it up for DHCP by default.
If you don't have DHCP, you'll know enough to set your own IP address anyway. What's the problem?
The mistake you make is assuming that Linux, which is essentially a patchwork system put together from pieces scavenged from here and there (with the GNU project being the biggest donator) and assembled in wildly varying configurations by different distributors...
And Windows isn't patchwork? What operating systems aren't patchwork? You just don't get to see Windows behind the scenes, the build process, the multiple components, etc.
With Linux, it's exposed if you want to deal with it. Or if you don't want to, don't--plenty of distros hide it from you.
It's not free, and it's not open source--it's always the same complaints leveled at almost every single commercial solution.
People, that money people use to pay for things actually goes back to the company and gives employees an incentive to sit there hacking away for 12 hours producing quality code and designing amazing new hardware. Volunteer work won't give you that kind of motivation (admit it, it won't), and it also won't let you quit your day job to devote all your time and energy to it.
Apple has the perfect balance--the kernel and rest of the OS is open source, but the stuff that really matters like their GUI and other software is proprietary closed. Ya have to buy it.
NT was always multi-user. Apple replaced its legacy OS with a new core, and Microsoft did just the same with Windows XP by introducing the NT line to the masses. Although I definitely think OS X is the better replacement! It's based on a Mach kernel with some BSD libraries and a userland environment in place.
DOS is a forgotten relic of the past--99% of the people I ask don't even know what DOS is or was.
Seriously!
:D
Microsoft--grungy Seattle, gray overcast days all the time, endless rain, boring and monotonous. And so we get Windows 95 and its ugly, drab gray, it's squares and lines, it's awful linear mindset to doing things. All the way up until Windows XP, and they just make everything blue and green, which looks like an attempt to be the pretty thing that OS X is without really "getting it."
Apple--beautiful, sunny Cupertino. Pleasant weather, lovely parks, lots of color. And so we get iMacs, OS X, pleasant colors with curves and sleek designs...seriously, who else makes hardware that you could actually describe as "sexy" with a straight face? I admit it, I see a PowerBook or a desktop G5 and I think, "Man, that's enough to make me drool!" And their usability factor is through the roof. OS X is a breath of fresh air when all you've used is Windows (and KDE/GNOME).
Just a theory on these two ways of thinking!
Apple is expensive and doesn't have as much software. Obviously, there are different factors involved.
Yes, people will move onto something else. It's called "free market." People use what's cheapest, easiest, etc. Whatever has the most advantages.
This is somewhat irrelevant. My point was that people will drop piss-poor apps like a bad habit, no matter how much the programmer whines about how he shouldn't be a slave to users. Basically, I'm saying that programmers shouldn't bitch if people don't like their stuff. If you don't want to hear feedback, keep your app on your private network and don't release it into the wild--obviously there was an intention for widespread usage by putting it online.
I don't like being forced to download 5-10 new libraries when I want to install a simple little app. Dependency hell is still hell. It's just been made into automatic hell.
Nobody's gonna take you seriously if you tell them, "Oh, Linux software is easy to install, let me show you! Fire up the command line and type 'urpmi' or 'apt-get'..."
.NET and Cocoa--none of this absolutely ridiculous QT/GTK/wxWindows/whatever nonsense that are merely hacks to get widgets up on X.
;)
I seriously wonder why nobody has implemented binary installation/uninstallation routines for the Linux desktops yet. What's the damn holdup? Users need to be able to buy a Linux application from a store, take it home, and stick in a CD to get an autoplay installer.
Of course, to get that truly working well, you'd want a sane, robust programming library in the likes of
Get a sane library that retains backwards compatibility on the level of Windows (for a simple example, try loading up an RPM you got 5-7 years ago and see how well it goes...compared to Windows which still runs 95 and even most 3.1 apps happily) along with a sane installation/uninstallation routine so that the desktop can actually keep track of its own components, and things would really change, and I would stop using Windows as my main desktop.
Then, of course, we should do all this on Y-Windows when 1.0 comes out.
Let's all hope that the wizards among us hear them and provide us all with better information than we've got now.
Instead of more endless "docs," I'd rather the problems just get fixed so nobody needs to go online looking at more HOWTOs. I used to look at HOWTOs years ago and hated them, and I've avoided them ever since because not a single one has ever helped me--they've only confused me more.
I guess I also had issues with the very idea that the OS needed me to go online and look at HOWTOs in order to set it up--hell, often the problem was that I didn't know how to get the OS online, so a lot of good it did me.
I've installed plenty of distros in the past two years. Everything he said is true. Heck, Mandrake even wanted me to check the button for the 3-button mouse, then shake the cursor all over the screen to get it to work (huh?).
:P
In Windows, it just knows when I plug the damned thing in.
Red Hat still asks you to partition things, and to mark out swap space, etc. It also asks you for a lot more network configuration than Windows does (Windows lets you just check "Typical settings"), generally asks for more questions on things like security levels, program groups to install, and so forth. Hell, check out the look on someone's face when they're asked to install a "bootloader"--what's more, their choices are things called "LILO" and "GRUB," typical OSS project names definitely showing how useful they are to people outside of development communities.
He's right--to say Linux is easier to install than Windows is insane fanboyism. It's just not true, and there's nothing wrong with admitting that so it can be addressed.
The CD costs money for users that don't have high-speed Internet access.
In that case, Linux distros aren't free either. Next.
I think Microsoft just can't win with you...
Oops.
The mistake both you and Microsoft make is to assume that all the mind-numbing complexity of standard desktop systems is somehow necessary.
:P
The mistake YOU make is assuming a self-healing system somehow equates to Windows, just because you don't like how Windows attempts its self-healing.
WTF does Windows have to do with Linux? Are you saying we can't do better? Or that we shouldn't try?
I don't get this incessant need for people to be resistant to change, progress, and making things easier. It's not going to make the CLR go away, don't worry.
However the programmer should be a slave to the user?
In a word...yes. Or else you fail usability.
Nobody's gonna act like your app is some gift from heaven. If users can't use it, they'll bitch and move on to something else. There are few things I hate more than programmer egos. YES, you're not God's greatest gift to computing. YES, if you're developing software you expect to be used publicly, you are slave to the users who will demand features, or else you're just another asshole who puts software out and then complains when people don't like it.
I don't get why so many Slashdotters assume their niche opinions represent the majority. They don't.
A lot of kids don't sit and program BASIC on their dad's C64s when they're 7 or 8. Maybe they trade baseball cards or play sports. Just because you did doesn't mean everyone does. Consequently, just because you sat down and spent hours learning how to program doesn't mean everyone else wants to.
There's no "change of heart" because the SDK/compiler was always a free download.
C'mon, people.
Only on Slashdot does Microsoft giving away a free command-line compiler (which they've always done in the past along with the rest of the SDK) somehow mean "MS is worried they're losing their development community."
.NET apps"--.NET has been a free download since the very beginning.
Losing it to what? Windows is 95+ of the market out there. As pointed out before, this isn't some "aggressive effort to get people to start developing
Come on, guys, let's stay rational here.