While you are correct in that the professional photographer still has a great need for all the fine-grained control that a real, film-based camera offers, I think the amateur photographer (read you and me who just like to take pictures of friends, family, or vacation stuff) is well-served by a digital camera. So in that vein, I do think digital cameras are replacing film cameras, except maybe in the high-end film camera space.
I was at the Linux Business Expo today, and got a demo of Photogenics from Paul Nolan himself. I must say its a DAMN cool program. I'm not sure of the hardware specs he was running it on (other than whatever it was was running Linux), but the app was speedy, and it looked a lot friendlier than GIMP (which I do have experience using thank you). Thats not to say the gimp cant be friendly or that its a poor app, because neither of those are true.
As for doing what gimp wont do, there was one thing Paul seemed to emphasize in the demo and that was applying transformations with a paintbrush instead of on a whole image or selected portion thereof. I'm not 100% sure that gimp cant do that, but I'd never seen it. For example, he'd take "pixellate", rub the paintbrush all over the image and it'd pixellate the "painted" parts as the brush passed over! Starting with a picture of a woman, he came up with a very cool facial collage like the one on his website when he was done appying and painting various transformations on the image. Very impressive! I think plenty of people even halfway serious about creating art under Linux would be interested (and well served) in purchasing this app. Besides, its still tons cheaper than Photoshop!
The FSF still asks for donations because they are still a non-profit organization. Sure, there are commercial entities who contribute to the (free|open) cause, be it with money, code, or whatever, it still doesnt change the fact that there is a FSF, they still do work, and they still could probably use funding.
And if they charge "heavily" for distributions... so? They clearly state you can download and use the software freely, the "charges" are basically just a donation to the FSF for the work they did in packaging media and documentation for you. Nothing stops you from doing the same yourself (downloading, burning the software to a disc, and printing up documentation).
Also, many of the GNU staff *do* consulting work for money. If you look on their site (or was it in a document I once read) it listed several of the GNU staff at the time, such as Roland McGrath saying they are available for interesting projects for a fee.
No, not all the linux companies stock is going down to zero. They are low right now because the entire market is low. I fully expect companies with a tangible product (and services) such as RedHat and VA to recover. Pure-content businesses such as ANDN (Andover) though, arent even worth the $10 or so that it dropped to (and I wonder how many losers paid the $80-$90 it peaked at) Just looking at slashdot, how much ad revenue can it be pulling in when at over half the ads displayed are from other companies in the Andover group??
Instead of the link the poster put to some site selling penguin mints, how about posting the actual site for penguin mints?? That site would be www.peppermints.com
I don't know if you will get to read this posting or not (I cant imagine it making the cut of questions presented to you, and I dont know if you read Slashdot regularly) but I just want to say that I think you are right on with your view of how websites should be designed. A couple years ago I bought a copy of "creative web design" and I've worn that book down considerably.
I already had a pretty decent knowlege of HTML prior to reading it though I both enjoyed reading it and learned quite a bit about topics the average web developer pays no attention to such as:
font selection (appropriate use of serifed and sans-serifed fonts)
color selection (browser-safe colors!)
proper selection of graphics formats (gif vs jpg... that both are approporiate) [sorry, RMS!]
It was also a great tutorial on javascript and photoshop (after learning the concepts of using photoshop to design nicer graphics from this book I was able to take what I learned and use the GIMP;)
If more web designers read this book, we'd have a much nicer web. I wish you (and your brother the Javascript man) the best of luck, and thank you so much for the excellent material you've provided us with!!
My job is being part of a team who manages over 400 sun servers. Do we have monitors hooked up to each of them though? No. We use a serial terminal server to get consoles on them. Sure the use of a GUI is nice from time to time, but to do maintenance on a system it is definitely not necessary, and I think that is the main reason the person who listed out possible criteria for unices stated that a windowing environment was not required.
Name one system configuration file in Solaris that you cannot edit like a text file.:) Granted in the last few years, GUI tools have become more popular in the UNIX world, but you can still get under the hood and make changes manually. Things like Solstice Admin Suite and Disk Suite are only help you manage those text files, they do not store information in an uneditable binary file or any such thing. I can't speak for AIX because I do not use those systems.
I am really tired of using people trying to separate linux and unix. Linux is every bit as much a UNIX as Solaris, AIX, HPUX, Unixware, and the myriad other flavors of UNIX.
Could someone give me some concrete reasons to differentiate Linux and UNIX?
While I agree with your statement about governments in some countries having (and abusing to some extent) their phone monopolies, this system is likely FAR out of reach to the ordinary people in these countries in the non-"Free World", so I can't see these governments viewing it as a threat. Hell, with the super-high prices of handsets and airtime, Iridium is out of reach for most of us Slashdot readers.
The failure of Iridium had nothing to do with governments wanting to maintain power. This is nothing political. Do you really think Iridium/Moto would shitcan a $7 billion project if they felt they could get any more money out of it? Even on the far stretch that politics had ANYTHING to do with this, it wouldnt stop it for long. As with all technology, someone is going to find a way to do the same thing cheaper and more efficently. I'm willing to bet that the design of the satellites (upgradability, maintainability, etc) has something to do with why no one is buying them. Either that, or Iridium wants too much and wont just accept the highest offer regardless.
I strongly believe this was not "purely politics", it was "purely financial".
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and not claim you are trolling, thoughif I had moderator access, I would be tempted to mark your post as such. I will reply for the benefit of the other readers.
I'm not sure how you think no one uses the support structure from their OS. While its true that pretty much no one calls on Microsoft when problems go wrong (lets not open up that can of worms) in any UNIX (and I dont differentiate between Linux and Unix) shop, support is of key importance. Most critical systems these days are running under some flavor of unix.
I will use Sun as an example, because maintaining those systems is how I make a living.
We have an extensive support contract with Sun, both with their hardware *and* software. If we encounter a bug or some other problem in software, we want answers quick. Dont give me any of this usenet bullshit, I want a paid professional on the other side of the phone when there is a computer problem of critical importance affecting my business. The same goes for hardware. I work for a major international exchange, we take our IT support issues seriously. I dont doubt that millions of other companies of all sizes are the same way.
So to wrap things up, as Linux matures and more companies begin to adopt it for critical functions, you better bet your ass that the support structure for Linux will improve and become a big source of revenue. True, IBM and other pre-Linux companies will have a share of that market, but there is no reason at all to claim RedHat, VA, Caldera, or other so-called "Linux Companies" cannot profit and become successful on a support-based model.
Um, there is an icon for Intel, maybe even for Cyrix.
But not for Motorola. And you dont know how much it turns my stomach to see the %^&#%$ APPLE icon displayed when a PowerPC story is run that is not explicitly specific to Apple.
I've asked the slashdot crew to add a Moto icon, to no avail.
We should also band together to get these vendors like Real who just pay lip service to supporting Linux, to treat Linux as a tier 1 platform. Just try looking for a Linux player on Real's site now. They've released Realplayer G2 and the new RealPlayer 7 without a new Linux version. The best you can do on Linux is Real 5.0 or some such. Try using that on media sites, I usually get an error saying I need the G2 player. ARRGGHH!!!
What I'd give to see someone reverse engineer either MSMP or Real's software and just give them both the finger.
Sony should buy the technology and merge it with the AIBO. Then I can get an aibo, and leave it some cookies or dead bugs and never have to worry about its battery life.:)
Bono.... You didn't specify what kind of things your CGI scripts do, so I can't do as good of a job as I'd like downplaying your reasons for not using scripting languages for CGI.;)
But I do know that there are things now such as mod_perl and FastCGI which attempt to relieve some of the shortcomings of perl for CGI by not having to invoke a new instance of the perl interpreter each time your script runs. I'd check out the apache docs, or go to http://www.fastcgi.com
Slashdot has icons for all kinds of companies, big and small, but not for Motorola. This would have been a fine example where I'd have loved to see a shiny Circle-M at the top of the screen. At least I didn't see the fsck'n APPLE logo like I usually do with most Motorola-centric PowerPC stories. I asked once and got no response, but say, how about a Moto section/icon, folks?
This has nothing to do with old guard politicians and their grasp (or lack thereof) of today's technology. Rather, the spam wasnt a result of it. I for one would LOVE to see the can spam act get passed, and if this helps in any way... GREAT! Go to http://www.cauce.org siri
Slashdot Mirror
I think that site and the one originally referenced are both running off the same 56k modem, god damn are they slow.
sorry, its been a long day!
siri
As for doing what gimp wont do, there was one thing Paul seemed to emphasize in the demo and that was applying transformations with a paintbrush instead of on a whole image or selected portion thereof. I'm not 100% sure that gimp cant do that, but I'd never seen it. For example, he'd take "pixellate", rub the paintbrush all over the image and it'd pixellate the "painted" parts as the brush passed over! Starting with a picture of a woman, he came up with a very cool facial collage like the one on his website when he was done appying and painting various transformations on the image. Very impressive! I think plenty of people even halfway serious about creating art under Linux would be interested (and well served) in purchasing this app. Besides, its still tons cheaper than Photoshop!
Pretty sweet indeed!
siri
And if they charge "heavily" for distributions... so? They clearly state you can download and use the software freely, the "charges" are basically just a donation to the FSF for the work they did in packaging media and documentation for you. Nothing stops you from doing the same yourself (downloading, burning the software to a disc, and printing up documentation).
Also, many of the GNU staff *do* consulting work for money. If you look on their site (or was it in a document I once read) it listed several of the GNU staff at the time, such as Roland McGrath saying they are available for interesting projects for a fee.
siri
sirinek
I don't know if you will get to read this posting or not (I cant imagine it making the cut of questions presented to you, and I dont know if you read Slashdot regularly) but I just want to say that I think you are right on with your view of how websites should be designed. A couple years ago I bought a copy of "creative web design" and I've worn that book down considerably.
I already had a pretty decent knowlege of HTML prior to reading it though I both enjoyed reading it and learned quite a bit about topics the average web developer pays no attention to such as:
It was also a great tutorial on javascript and photoshop (after learning the concepts of using photoshop to design nicer graphics from this book I was able to take what I learned and use the GIMP ;)
If more web designers read this book, we'd have a much nicer web. I wish you (and your brother the Javascript man) the best of luck, and thank you so much for the excellent material you've provided us with!!
Bill
My job is being part of a team who manages over 400 sun servers. Do we have monitors hooked up to each of them though? No. We use a serial terminal server to get consoles on them. Sure the use of a GUI is nice from time to time, but to do maintenance on a system it is definitely not necessary, and I think that is the main reason the person who listed out possible criteria for unices stated that a windowing environment was not required.
siri
siri
Could someone give me some concrete reasons to differentiate Linux and UNIX?
While I agree with your statement about governments in some countries having (and abusing to some extent) their phone monopolies, this system is likely FAR out of reach to the ordinary people in these countries in the non-"Free World", so I can't see these governments viewing it as a threat. Hell, with the super-high prices of handsets and airtime, Iridium is out of reach for most of us Slashdot readers.
The failure of Iridium had nothing to do with governments wanting to maintain power. This is nothing political. Do you really think Iridium/Moto would shitcan a $7 billion project if they felt they could get any more money out of it? Even on the far stretch that politics had ANYTHING to do with this, it wouldnt stop it for long. As with all technology, someone is going to find a way to do the same thing cheaper and more efficently. I'm willing to bet that the design of the satellites (upgradability, maintainability, etc) has something to do with why no one is buying them. Either that, or Iridium wants too much and wont just accept the highest offer regardless.
I strongly believe this was not "purely politics", it was "purely financial".
I'm not sure how you think no one uses the support structure from their OS. While its true that pretty much no one calls on Microsoft when problems go wrong (lets not open up that can of worms) in any UNIX (and I dont differentiate between Linux and Unix) shop, support is of key importance. Most critical systems these days are running under some flavor of unix.
I will use Sun as an example, because maintaining those systems is how I make a living.
We have an extensive support contract with Sun, both with their hardware *and* software. If we encounter a bug or some other problem in software, we want answers quick. Dont give me any of this usenet bullshit, I want a paid professional on the other side of the phone when there is a computer problem of critical importance affecting my business. The same goes for hardware. I work for a major international exchange, we take our IT support issues seriously. I dont doubt that millions of other companies of all sizes are the same way.
So to wrap things up, as Linux matures and more companies begin to adopt it for critical functions, you better bet your ass that the support structure for Linux will improve and become a big source of revenue. True, IBM and other pre-Linux companies will have a share of that market, but there is no reason at all to claim RedHat, VA, Caldera, or other so-called "Linux Companies" cannot profit and become successful on a support-based model.
siri
That was goddamn near the funniest thing I have read in a long time! If I had moderator access for this topic, I'd definitely kick it up a notch. :)
siri
sirinek
http://www.pineusa.com/mp3-cd.htm
Um, there is an icon for Intel, maybe even for Cyrix.
But not for Motorola. And you dont know how much it turns my stomach to see the %^&#%$ APPLE icon displayed when a PowerPC story is run that is not explicitly specific to Apple.
I've asked the slashdot crew to add a Moto icon, to no avail.
We should also band together to get these vendors like Real who just pay lip service to supporting Linux, to treat Linux as a tier 1 platform. Just try looking for a Linux player on Real's site now. They've released Realplayer G2 and the new RealPlayer 7 without a new Linux version. The best you can do on Linux is Real 5.0 or some such. Try using that on media sites, I usually get an error saying I need the G2 player. ARRGGHH!!!
What I'd give to see someone reverse engineer either MSMP or Real's software and just give them both the finger.
But I do know that there are things now such as mod_perl and FastCGI which attempt to relieve some of the shortcomings of perl for CGI by not having to invoke a new instance of the perl interpreter each time your script runs. I'd check out the apache docs, or go to http://www.fastcgi.com
Bill
Slashdot has icons for all kinds of companies, big and small, but not for Motorola. This would have been a fine example where I'd have loved to see a shiny Circle-M at the top of the screen. At least I didn't see the fsck'n APPLE logo like I usually do with most Motorola-centric PowerPC stories. I asked once and got no response, but say, how about a Moto section/icon, folks?
This has nothing to do with old guard politicians and their grasp (or lack thereof) of today's technology. Rather, the spam wasnt a result of it. I for one would LOVE to see the can spam act get passed, and if this helps in any way... GREAT! Go to http://www.cauce.org siri