For running various OSses on one box I'd say VM away. But as to remote desktops - why would you want to use a VM based solution? Back when I was an admin at Uni I used to roll custom linux bootp kernels, and with some fairly basic shell scripting the departmental PC's under my care behaved like psuedo X-Terminals. Binaries and user data were stored on server someplace while the user would run apps on his local CPU/Mem. Saved the department a lot of money and gave me total control over close to a hundred machines - without ever having to leave my office. Unlike the MS Windows support/admin guys, who'd constantly be running about the building.
My advice would be to go from UNIX adminning to full blown programming.
STEP 0. Learn basic UNIX sys-adminning by installing a Linux distribution and then studying how it goes from boot to login prompt.
I suggest you use Arch Linux. Along the way you'll learn about: reading on-line documentation using 'man', basic TCP/IP networking, basic user administration, directory structures and file systems, running basic service daemons like ssh, apache and ftp, basic computer security and basic text editing (use pico/nano instead of vi).
DO NOT INSTALL A GUI/Desktop Environment like X11, GNOME or KDE yet. This will help you focus on the adminning of the core OS and give you an understanding of how GUI's are seperate entities from Operating Systems.
then...
STEP 1. Learn the basic concepts of 'structured programming'. Important to realise that these are _principles_ - they aren;t tied to a language per se.
At the minimum, you need to learn about: 1. control structures like if/then and while, and 2. the basic data-structures like variables and arrays. I'd suggest you use C and the BASH shell to learn this.
Using C well that's a no brainer. It's the language of UNIX and it's still a very good language to know. I suggest you get Kernighan and Richie's classic book on C. You can also pick up one of Wirths books on PASCAL or Modula 2. Not sexy languages, but particularly Modula 2 has the structured programming stuff very well implemented.
Caveat on C: Working wih text is going to be a pain till you move on to something more suited for humans - like Python or Ruby - but you need to understand structured programming first.
Tip when learning C: spend some time with Structures. The concept will help you better understand Object Oriented Programming when you get to it. If you're interested in actual computer hardware and architecture, then probe a little deeper into memory management using Pointers.
Using the BASH shell will help you appreciate that 1. not all programming is elegant and 2. that the basic principles are found in many different forms. As a bonus it will 3. tie-in nicely with the adminning you've done in step 0.
then...
STEP 2. Install basic X11 and a windowmanager. DO NOT INSTALL a Desktop Environment like GNOME or KDE yet.
Follow the start-up of the X11 system through its configuration files. Use X11 over a network running a program on one machine and displaying it on another. choose a window manager you like and configure it.
All of this will help you understand the layered nature of modern computer systems. And choosing a window manager is fun. It will also introduce you to the concept of library dependancies, as most window managers need a bunch of extra lib to work. though Arch linux will help remove much of the pain.
then...
STEP 3. Install the TCK/TK language. This will give you a relatively painless introduction to cross platform GUI development as it runs without much modification on UNIX, Win32, and OS X.
There are pro's and con;s to TCL/TK, but in my opinion the pro's far outweigh the con's. You'll get 1. an appreciation of how badly canvas widgets suck in most other GUI toolkits. 2. an insight into how there is a split between the visual and algorithmic part of coding 3. you'll be able to write complex GUI stuff in very little time, which will make you feel good even though you're still a rookie programmer. 4. Python uses Tk as its default GUI widget set, so if you decide to learn Python in step 4 you'll already know how to use the standard GUI bits in Python.
then..
STEP 4. Learn the basic principles of Object Oriented programming. Choose Python or Ruby. Python is good because it's good and you've already learnt Tk. Ruby is better because it's better and it'll set you up for AJAX web stuff when you get around to Ruby on Rails.
Again master the basic concepts of OOP: Classes, Instances of Classes, Inheritance. Polymorphism etc. Start out with reading wikipedia and follow the a
Any real change since Xt/Motif roamed the Desktop?
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I was looking at crusty old Xt/Motif (in combination with ViewKit) the other day and it seems to me that most 'modern' toolkits basically do the same thing that Motif did 900 years ago. Other than AA fonts and widget themes, (stuff that could have been implemented in Motif way back when, and now actually has been for the most part in its Open Source versions) I'm not convinced that GUI programming has moved on a lot since Motif was dropped on GIMP 0.54.
In fact it seems to me that the only stand-out toolkit is Tk, with its excellent Text and Canvas widgets and dead-simple syntax.
As usual, the engineers at Silicon Graphics were way way way ahead of the curve... the IRIX windowmanager has been called '4Dwm' since the early 90's. In fact the IRIX 'Indigo Magic Desktop' is still pretty sweet for something that has not seen serious development since 1997-8.
Too bad the engineers have been let down by incompetent management for almost as long...
Most interesting point in Linus' argument is that specs are good for _talking_. Which makes complete sense to me, as it seems that those that can't code their way out of a soggy paper bag are the strongest supporters of spec-driven development.
Replacing MS Windows or Office or Outlook or what have you with a better product _might_ happen one day. But I think that just as people will continue to have heart attacks, to pay too much at the pump or be confronted with social ferment and civil unrest because of their stupid governments, people will make do with 'good enough' software that 'gets the job done most of the time'.
The reason being that most people relate best to what they understand and how they think. And that is in most cases: average. So mickeysoft and most other corporations are in the business of selling average. Average is where the numbers are, average is where profit lives.
The thing discerning people should be gunning for, is not 'replacing' current mediocre software, but making sure that the interchange of data remains moderately simple for those of us that care about quality.
DRM, application lock-in and other information sharing roadbump nastyness are the real issues. World domination is a stupid goal, but making sure the information elite still can talk to the unwashed masses is essential.
I make my living as a graphic designer and I've been dualbooting gnu/linux on my desktop since 1993/4 (SLS floppy distro if you must know). I do Web and Application Programming on the Unix side, and DTP and Design on the Win32 side.
Now that you know where I'm coming from, I'll let you into a dirty little secret from the smelly trenches of Real World design work. A little home truth that the X11/Glitz/OpenGL/XAA driver boys and the DR17 eye-candy merchants don't want you to know: Infrastructure and X11 and OpenGL and what have you arent things that we designers worry about too much.
For those that are deaf and can;t hear the frustration in my voice I repeat: CREAKING GFX-INFRASTRUCTURE IS NOT A PROBLEM THAT GIVES DESIGNERS SLEEPLESS NIGHTS IN THE REAL WORLD.
However, the main reason I still need to dual boot and suffer the pain of win32 apps, more than TEN years after starting using GNU/Linux, is the continuing lack of USER SPACE GFX APPS.
No production grade Free Software replacements for Flash, CorelDRAW/Illustrator and Pagemaker/InDesign exist.
'Well why don;t you use MacOS X then' is the answer I usually get, but that's the whole f-ing point! I don;t wan to have to run MacOS X in the first place, I want to be able to run GNU/Linux or FreeBSD or Solaris or IRIX or whatever and have Free Software gfx apps.
But no, the best minds of the Free Software waste their energy copy-vating the Apple Finder and MS Office, and a building a better webserver. Well Hurrah Bloody Hurrah.
I herewith go on record in stating that from a designers point of view, Free Software is largely a bitter disappointment.
PS. There might be three or four apps that sort of make the grade but that's mainly because I like GNU/Linux and wish to be charitable. In truth they suck too;(
I'm sure there's reason to get excited about Mhz and the possible 'moral' implications of a marketleader 'cheating', but I'll get real excited when a marketleader PC-pasts builder decides to move away from that wretched smelly BIOS based architecture. Surely companies like ASUS are large enough to start designing innovative platforms using commoditiy parts?
Via has been doing it to some extent with Mini-ITX, iWill did some interesting stuff with the dual opteron ZMAXdp... I challenge ASUS to come up with a similar innovation or achievement.
GNOME and KDE are application development frameworks as much as they are 'Desktops'. It's is therefore ironic that the GNU version of the highly respected Openstep/NeXTSTEP application framework, which by the way is now of course the foundation of Apple's Cocoa/Mac OS X stuff, receives so little coverage or interest.
It seems to me that GNUstep (http://www.gnustep.org/) offers the cleanest framework for application design in Open Source land with a totally Kick-arse development environment etc. etc. etc. Am I the only person that finds it rather odd that so few people use it?
Can anybody tell me how this 'Das Keyboard' thing is different from a classic IBM keyboard with 'stealth' paint?
I suspect someone had 1. a large consignment of used IBM keyboards, 2. invested a couple of hundred bucks in spraying them stealth black to 'clean them up' and 3. is now laughing all the way to the bank.
The really annoying thing about all of this is...
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Dutch Pass iPod Tax
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that the 'industry', be it movie, music or whatever, is generally composed (forgive the pun) by manager types that couldn't play a note, write a line or film a scene if their lives depended on it. All these bloody hangers-on that milk the half-a-dozen creatives (who I suspect if you explained things to them wouldn't mind their material being shared fairly) in their 'stables' are simply too annoying for words.
Furthermore, these kind of managerial/legal landgrab exercises make me sooo mad, mainly because it has nothing to do with protecting the 'good of Art' and everything with cynical attempts at boosting shareholder value.
Unfortunatly the only way to really take a stand against this cr*p seems to be by not buying the products involved - both content and hardware. But who's got the patience and backbone to be consistent about _that_?
The author of the eWeek article writes: "My conclusion: In most of American business, the supposed competition between Microsoft and Linux just doesn't exist. And with good reason."
Unfortunately, he doesn;t seem mention the right reason in his article.
Just like the author, I think it's very probable that M$ has little to fear from GNU/Linux in the Mid-size enterprise market in the near future. But I don;t believe this has anything to do with 'cost effectivity' or 'quality of software'.
At its heart M$ vs. GNU/Linux is an ideological battle. Freedom to choose and Freedom of ideas are at the heart of FOSS, not better quality software nor cost-effectivity. Most mid-size corporate entities are simply not aware of, or interested in, the issues surrounding Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Information and patent-lunacy. After all, they operate in a cultural climate that considers short-term 'shareholder value' as it's highest virtue, not unprofitable long-term stuff like ensuring a culture of openness and discourse.
This corporate mindset weakens the strongest argument for using GNU/Linux: 'Doing the right thing'. In my opinion using GNU/Linux effectively doesn't flow from TCO-style considerations. Rather, effective use of GNU/Linux stems from a Freedom-oriented mindset and such a mindset is a rare thing in Mid-size enterprises.
Put simply, M$ vs. GNU/Linux is about business ethics. And as we all know 'American Business' is not the place to go looking for that elusive quality.
I'm all for a funded-by-viewers approach to Enterprise as I think that Enterprise has the backstory to be the best and most relevant of all the ST spin-offs. It could have been the ST spin-off that would have made 'real people' (== non-geeks) take notice of the storytelling power of Sci-Fi.
Unfortunately, from the outset the producers of ST:ENT choose to make superficial visual kack. The series should have stayed close to home dealing with politics and infighting on Earth. Showing space agencies and corporations vying for power over space exploration, over information technology and over the way the sciences infuence our lives. Enterprise could have been a playground for exploring differences in culture, religion and science ON AND AROUND EARTH in the near future - with the odd personal intrigue story thrown in.
ST:ENT didn;t need a new set of insanely out-of-the-canon set of Xindi aliens. We humans can make a massive hash out of things without polluting the ST universe with an annoying 5 subspecies set of unconvincing aliens. Ironically, now in the 2nd half of the final season, the episodes are better than the average ST:ENT dross because they feature Old Skool aliens! Andorians, Tellerites, Romulans, Vulcans and Klingons. Using the well-known ST aliens and setting ST:ENT in a much smaller universe from the start, would have allowed the writers to explore the classic ST cultures in a deeper fashion. ST:ENT should have deepened our understanding and appreciation of the CURRENT ST canon. It should never have created new aliens or resurrected the hollywood Nazi.
Finally, the pre-teflon federation timeframe of the prequel offered its writers more freedom to make Enterprise 'rougher' and more 'realistic' than any other of the ST spin-offs. ST:ENT was a golden opportunity to do away with that horrible moralising, puritanical streak of US corporate content creation. It failed miserably.
We live in a time when the Big Idea is dead or dying. Personal conficts, the tension between technology & tradition and plain old love/revenge/making-ends-meet stories are the ones relevant to our time. ST:ENT tried to boldly go out into the stars when it should have boldly gone inward, dealing with the messy times of character development and socio-political intrige involved in the genesis of the uber-modernist Federation.
ST:ENT has turned out to be a massive missed opportunity for relevant storytelling. For fumbling _that_ ball, Berman et al. should be hung from the highest lampposts on the studio lot.
One small item I;d like to add in the mix of comments is that in my opinion project management is mainly relevant to the grey mass of University sanctioned semi-competents. Genius has a way of coming up with the goods regardless. Unfortunatly there isn;t that much genius to go around, and most projects never get a glimpse of genius. Also, no self-respecting genius wants to do updates which means the even software that was touched by genius will at some point be FUBARred by a semi-competent on upgrade-duty.
Why o why o why do soooo many people whine about the UI of the GIMP? I dont get it at all.
What's so hard to understand about the GIMP?
There's a toolbox - double click the tool for options - a colour picker and a brush selector. Easy. It does reasonable AA text, albeit a little clunkily and it has a whole lot of load/save options per supported filetype. Easy. There are options per image under the right mouse button and there are options per session of the gimp application in the menu at the top of the toolbar. Easy. It allows for any number of views of the image you're working on and it has configurable shortkeys for lots of stuff. Easy. It has most of the image manipulation filters you's expect from a heavy duty gfx app and a kick-arse animation plugin. Easy.
The only thing about recent versions of the GIMP that really annoys me is the Gtk+ 2.x/Pango/atk/glib complex. This has become so slow that it's almost unbearable. Gtk+ is now a dog of a behomoth of a bitch of a toolkit. Die Gtk+ die.
Finally, the fact that there is very minimal (non-existant really) support for the CMYK colourspace is an annoyance too. Other than that the GIMP is simply great value and a lot of fun to use.
Oh, one thing though - the GIMP really needs to be run on a Unix. Win32 versions of the GIMP suck _really_ badly.
We all know that getting rid of MS software is a doable thing in most 'corporate' environments. Large scale desktop deployment, remote management, security, backups etc. is all easier or saner under some form of *NIX.
The real issues are:
- Moronic set-in-stone corporate IT-policies introduced by the recently fired 'MIS Manager' (pun intended) after he came back from some 4 day Microsoft training seminar. - Fear of making a mistake with large financial reprecussions that will make you look silly at the friday beer-bash, which in turn will cause you to lose your job as an overpaid MIS Manager.
I have yet to see somebody that knows his/her stuff f*ck up a *NIX installation. All the people that I know and who understand their stuff get the job done quicker and smarter and have more fun doing it.
Beyond these two items the main threat to Free Software is the ever looming threat of Software Patents, but that's another story.
My Sony vaio r505gc with extended battery does 6-7 hours under Linux without much trouble. But that's under GNU/Linux;) If I really squeeze: dimmed backlight, just text processing etc. I get 7-8 hours. Naturally compiling sources will bite into the battery quite seriously.
Under Win2k it's a bit less impressive I never get more than 4-5 hours. You see the bitches at Sony don;t care about their customers so the powermanagement apps don;t really work too well under Win2k, only under XP. And as we know stock MS powermanagement is pretty poor.
So, off to ebay you lot for a sony R505 and an extended battery. Caveat: getting its wireless to work under GNU/Linux is a pain.
It seems to me that the large tech companies in the US have forgotten about doing things in a garage.
I bet that with 4 decent OS coders, 2 OpenGL guru's, a clever UI designer (like me:)), a good secretary and 5 million of Suns dollars, you can build a *nix based system with a UI concept that goes well beyond the 25 year old Palo Alto/Finder concept we use now. One that will actually help us deal with the huge amounts of information we produce, consume and shift around our networks these days.
But nobody ever listens to me... they seem to prefer coming back to tell that me I was right after all:(
Slashdot Mirror
With that list of reqs/specs I'd just go with the original paperback:
1. Low puchase cost
2. Best in class - by far - battery life
3. Best in class - by far - display resolution
4. Lightweight
For running various OSses on one box I'd say VM away. But as to remote desktops - why would you want to use a VM based solution? Back when I was an admin at Uni I used to roll custom linux bootp kernels, and with some fairly basic shell scripting the departmental PC's under my care behaved like psuedo X-Terminals. Binaries and user data were stored on server someplace while the user would run apps on his local CPU/Mem. Saved the department a lot of money and gave me total control over close to a hundred machines - without ever having to leave my office. Unlike the MS Windows support/admin guys, who'd constantly be running about the building.
Actually on the topic of C++... I think a petition for banning C++ forever is a much better idea.
My advice would be to go from UNIX adminning to full blown programming.
STEP 0. Learn basic UNIX sys-adminning by installing a Linux distribution and then studying how it goes from boot to login prompt.
I suggest you use Arch Linux. Along the way you'll learn about: reading on-line documentation using 'man', basic TCP/IP networking, basic user administration, directory structures and file systems, running basic service daemons like ssh, apache and ftp, basic computer security and basic text editing (use pico/nano instead of vi).
DO NOT INSTALL A GUI/Desktop Environment like X11, GNOME or KDE yet. This will help you focus on the adminning of the core OS and give you an understanding of how GUI's are seperate entities from Operating Systems.
then...
STEP 1. Learn the basic concepts of 'structured programming'. Important to realise that these are _principles_ - they aren;t tied to a language per se.
At the minimum, you need to learn about: 1. control structures like if/then and while, and 2. the basic data-structures like variables and arrays. I'd suggest you use C and the BASH shell to learn this.
Using C well that's a no brainer. It's the language of UNIX and it's still a very good language to know. I suggest you get Kernighan and Richie's classic book on C. You can also pick up one of Wirths books on PASCAL or Modula 2. Not sexy languages, but particularly Modula 2 has the structured programming stuff very well implemented.
Caveat on C: Working wih text is going to be a pain till you move on to something more suited for humans - like Python or Ruby - but you need to understand structured programming first.
Tip when learning C: spend some time with Structures. The concept will help you better understand Object Oriented Programming when you get to it. If you're interested in actual computer hardware and architecture, then probe a little deeper into memory management using Pointers.
Using the BASH shell will help you appreciate that 1. not all programming is elegant and 2. that the basic principles are found in many different forms. As a bonus it will 3. tie-in nicely with the adminning you've done in step 0.
then...
STEP 2. Install basic X11 and a windowmanager. DO NOT INSTALL a Desktop Environment like GNOME or KDE yet.
Follow the start-up of the X11 system through its configuration files. Use X11 over a network running a program on one machine and displaying it on another. choose a window manager you like and configure it.
All of this will help you understand the layered nature of modern computer systems. And choosing a window manager is fun. It will also introduce you to the concept of library dependancies, as most window managers need a bunch of extra lib to work. though Arch linux will help remove much of the pain.
then...
STEP 3. Install the TCK/TK language. This will give you a relatively painless introduction to cross platform GUI development as it runs without much modification on UNIX, Win32, and OS X.
There are pro's and con;s to TCL/TK, but in my opinion the pro's far outweigh the con's. You'll get 1. an appreciation of how badly canvas widgets suck in most other GUI toolkits. 2. an insight into how there is a split between the visual and algorithmic part of coding 3. you'll be able to write complex GUI stuff in very little time, which will make you feel good even though you're still a rookie programmer. 4. Python uses Tk as its default GUI widget set, so if you decide to learn Python in step 4 you'll already know how to use the standard GUI bits in Python.
then..
STEP 4. Learn the basic principles of Object Oriented programming. Choose Python or Ruby. Python is good because it's good and you've already learnt Tk. Ruby is better because it's better and it'll set you up for AJAX web stuff when you get around to Ruby on Rails.
Again master the basic concepts of OOP: Classes, Instances of Classes, Inheritance. Polymorphism etc. Start out with reading wikipedia and follow the a
I was looking at crusty old Xt/Motif (in combination with ViewKit) the other day and it seems to me that most 'modern' toolkits basically do the same thing that Motif did 900 years ago. Other than AA fonts and widget themes, (stuff that could have been implemented in Motif way back when, and now actually has been for the most part in its Open Source versions) I'm not convinced that GUI programming has moved on a lot since Motif was dropped on GIMP 0.54.
In fact it seems to me that the only stand-out toolkit is Tk, with its excellent Text and Canvas widgets and dead-simple syntax.
Actually AJAX for football! www.ajax.nl
As usual, the engineers at Silicon Graphics were way way way ahead of the curve... the IRIX windowmanager has been called '4Dwm' since the early 90's. In fact the IRIX 'Indigo Magic Desktop' is still pretty sweet for something that has not seen serious development since 1997-8.
Too bad the engineers have been let down by incompetent management for almost as long...
Most interesting point in Linus' argument is that specs are good for _talking_. Which makes complete sense to me, as it seems that those that can't code their way out of a soggy paper bag are the strongest supporters of spec-driven development.
Replacing MS Windows or Office or Outlook or what have you with a better product _might_ happen one day. But I think that just as people will continue to have heart attacks, to pay too much at the pump or be confronted with social ferment and civil unrest because of their stupid governments, people will make do with 'good enough' software that 'gets the job done most of the time'.
The reason being that most people relate best to what they understand and how they think. And that is in most cases: average. So mickeysoft and most other corporations are in the business of selling average. Average is where the numbers are, average is where profit lives.
The thing discerning people should be gunning for, is not 'replacing' current mediocre software, but making sure that the interchange of data remains moderately simple for those of us that care about quality.
DRM, application lock-in and other information sharing roadbump nastyness are the real issues. World domination is a stupid goal, but making sure the information elite still can talk to the unwashed masses is essential.
I make my living as a graphic designer and I've been dualbooting gnu/linux on my desktop since 1993/4 (SLS floppy distro if you must know). I do Web and Application Programming on the Unix side, and DTP and Design on the Win32 side.
;(
Now that you know where I'm coming from, I'll let you into a dirty little secret from the smelly trenches of Real World design work. A little home truth that the X11/Glitz/OpenGL/XAA driver boys and the DR17 eye-candy merchants don't want you to know: Infrastructure and X11 and OpenGL and what have you arent things that we designers worry about too much.
For those that are deaf and can;t hear the frustration in my voice I repeat: CREAKING GFX-INFRASTRUCTURE IS NOT A PROBLEM THAT GIVES DESIGNERS SLEEPLESS NIGHTS IN THE REAL WORLD.
However, the main reason I still need to dual boot and suffer the pain of win32 apps, more than TEN years after starting using GNU/Linux, is the continuing lack of USER SPACE GFX APPS.
No production grade Free Software replacements for Flash, CorelDRAW/Illustrator and Pagemaker/InDesign exist.
'Well why don;t you use MacOS X then' is the answer I usually get, but that's the whole f-ing point! I don;t wan to have to run MacOS X in the first place, I want to be able to run GNU/Linux or FreeBSD or Solaris or IRIX or whatever and have Free Software gfx apps.
But no, the best minds of the Free Software waste their energy copy-vating the Apple Finder and MS Office, and a building a better webserver. Well Hurrah Bloody Hurrah.
I herewith go on record in stating that from a designers point of view, Free Software is largely a bitter disappointment.
PS. There might be three or four apps that sort of make the grade but that's mainly because I like GNU/Linux and wish to be charitable. In truth they suck too
I'm sure there's reason to get excited about Mhz and the possible 'moral' implications of a marketleader 'cheating', but I'll get real excited when a marketleader PC-pasts builder decides to move away from that wretched smelly BIOS based architecture. Surely companies like ASUS are large enough to start designing innovative platforms using commoditiy parts?
Via has been doing it to some extent with Mini-ITX, iWill did some interesting stuff with the dual opteron ZMAXdp... I challenge ASUS to come up with a similar innovation or achievement.
Then I'll get excited.
GNOME and KDE are application development frameworks as much as they are 'Desktops'. It's is therefore ironic that the GNU version of the highly respected Openstep/NeXTSTEP application framework, which by the way is now of course the foundation of Apple's Cocoa/Mac OS X stuff, receives so little coverage or interest.
It seems to me that GNUstep (http://www.gnustep.org/) offers the cleanest framework for application design in Open Source land with a totally Kick-arse development environment etc. etc. etc. Am I the only person that finds it rather odd that so few people use it?
Strangy strangy...
what about audio IN? that way it would (shock horror) actually be useful, because we could (possibly) run skype on it.
Can anybody tell me how this 'Das Keyboard' thing is different from a classic IBM keyboard with 'stealth' paint?
I suspect someone had 1. a large consignment of used IBM keyboards, 2. invested a couple of hundred bucks in spraying them stealth black to 'clean them up' and 3. is now laughing all the way to the bank.
that the 'industry', be it movie, music or whatever, is generally composed (forgive the pun) by manager types that couldn't play a note, write a line or film a scene if their lives depended on it. All these bloody hangers-on that milk the half-a-dozen creatives (who I suspect if you explained things to them wouldn't mind their material being shared fairly) in their 'stables' are simply too annoying for words.
;)
Furthermore, these kind of managerial/legal landgrab exercises make me sooo mad, mainly because it has nothing to do with protecting the 'good of Art' and everything with cynical attempts at boosting shareholder value.
Unfortunatly the only way to really take a stand against this cr*p seems to be by not buying the products involved - both content and hardware. But who's got the patience and backbone to be consistent about _that_?
Prolly only RMS
The author of the eWeek article writes: "My conclusion: In most of American business, the supposed competition between Microsoft and Linux just doesn't exist. And with good reason."
Unfortunately, he doesn;t seem mention the right reason in his article.
Just like the author, I think it's very probable that M$ has little to fear from GNU/Linux in the Mid-size enterprise market in the near future. But I don;t believe this has anything to do with 'cost effectivity' or 'quality of software'.
At its heart M$ vs. GNU/Linux is an ideological battle. Freedom to choose and Freedom of ideas are at the heart of FOSS, not better quality software nor cost-effectivity. Most mid-size corporate entities are simply not aware of, or interested in, the issues surrounding Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Information and patent-lunacy. After all, they operate in a cultural climate that considers short-term 'shareholder value' as it's highest virtue, not unprofitable long-term stuff like ensuring a culture of openness and discourse.
This corporate mindset weakens the strongest argument for using GNU/Linux: 'Doing the right thing'. In my opinion using GNU/Linux effectively doesn't flow from TCO-style considerations. Rather, effective use of GNU/Linux stems from a Freedom-oriented mindset and such a mindset is a rare thing in Mid-size enterprises.
Put simply, M$ vs. GNU/Linux is about business ethics. And as we all know 'American Business' is not the place to go looking for that elusive quality.
I'm all for a funded-by-viewers approach to Enterprise as I think that Enterprise has the backstory to be the best and most relevant of all the ST spin-offs. It could have been the ST spin-off that would have made 'real people' (== non-geeks) take notice of the storytelling power of Sci-Fi.
Unfortunately, from the outset the producers of ST:ENT choose to make superficial visual kack. The series should have stayed close to home dealing with politics and infighting on Earth. Showing space agencies and corporations vying for power over space exploration, over information technology and over the way the sciences infuence our lives. Enterprise could have been a playground for exploring differences in culture, religion and science ON AND AROUND EARTH in the near future - with the odd personal intrigue story thrown in.
ST:ENT didn;t need a new set of insanely out-of-the-canon set of Xindi aliens. We humans can make a massive hash out of things without polluting the ST universe with an annoying 5 subspecies set of unconvincing aliens. Ironically, now in the 2nd half of the final season, the episodes are better than the average ST:ENT dross because they feature Old Skool aliens! Andorians, Tellerites, Romulans, Vulcans and Klingons. Using the well-known ST aliens and setting ST:ENT in a much smaller universe from the start, would have allowed the writers to explore the classic ST cultures in a deeper fashion. ST:ENT should have deepened our understanding and appreciation of the CURRENT ST canon. It should never have created new aliens or resurrected the hollywood Nazi.
Finally, the pre-teflon federation timeframe of the prequel offered its writers more freedom to make Enterprise 'rougher' and more 'realistic' than any other of the ST spin-offs. ST:ENT was a golden opportunity to do away with that horrible moralising, puritanical streak of US corporate content creation. It failed miserably.
We live in a time when the Big Idea is dead or dying. Personal conficts, the tension between technology & tradition and plain old love/revenge/making-ends-meet stories are the ones relevant to our time. ST:ENT tried to boldly go out into the stars when it should have boldly gone inward, dealing with the messy times of character development and socio-political intrige involved in the genesis of the uber-modernist Federation.
ST:ENT has turned out to be a massive missed opportunity for relevant storytelling. For fumbling _that_ ball, Berman et al. should be hung from the highest lampposts on the studio lot.
One small item I;d like to add in the mix of comments is that in my opinion project management is mainly relevant to the grey mass of University sanctioned semi-competents. Genius has a way of coming up with the goods regardless. Unfortunatly there isn;t that much genius to go around, and most projects never get a glimpse of genius. Also, no self-respecting genius wants to do updates which means the even software that was touched by genius will at some point be FUBARred by a semi-competent on upgrade-duty.
Actually I don;t think that Qt was around (and certainly not in GPLled form) when GIMP moved from motif (version 0.54) to it's own toolkit - Gtk+.
Why o why o why do soooo many people whine about the UI of the GIMP? I dont get it at all.
What's so hard to understand about the GIMP?
There's a toolbox - double click the tool for options - a colour picker and a brush selector. Easy. It does reasonable AA text, albeit a little clunkily and it has a whole lot of load/save options per supported filetype. Easy. There are options per image under the right mouse button and there are options per session of the gimp application in the menu at the top of the toolbar. Easy. It allows for any number of views of the image you're working on and it has configurable shortkeys for lots of stuff. Easy. It has most of the image manipulation filters you's expect from a heavy duty gfx app and a kick-arse animation plugin. Easy.
The only thing about recent versions of the GIMP that really annoys me is the Gtk+ 2.x/Pango/atk/glib complex. This has become so slow that it's almost unbearable. Gtk+ is now a dog of a behomoth of a bitch of a toolkit. Die Gtk+ die.
Finally, the fact that there is very minimal (non-existant really) support for the CMYK colourspace is an annoyance too. Other than that the GIMP is simply great value and a lot of fun to use.
Oh, one thing though - the GIMP really needs to be run on a Unix. Win32 versions of the GIMP suck _really_ badly.
The thing that really gets me all confused is why in 's holy name do those enterprise people still use MS products in the first place.
Overpriced, under specced, complicated in the extreme and simply not fun to use.
Corporate IT is a weird, weird thing...
actually...
Europe 400 Million people
India 800 Million people
Kina 2 billion people
USA 1 Million people...
and 299 Million neanderthals with credit cards.
We all know that getting rid of MS software is a doable thing in most 'corporate' environments. Large scale desktop deployment, remote management, security, backups etc. is all easier or saner under some form of *NIX.
The real issues are:
- Moronic set-in-stone corporate IT-policies introduced by the recently fired 'MIS Manager' (pun intended) after he came back from some 4 day Microsoft training seminar.
- Fear of making a mistake with large financial reprecussions that will make you look silly at the friday beer-bash, which in turn will cause you to lose your job as an overpaid MIS Manager.
I have yet to see somebody that knows his/her stuff f*ck up a *NIX installation. All the people that I know and who understand their stuff get the job done quicker and smarter and have more fun doing it.
Beyond these two items the main threat to Free Software is the ever looming threat of Software Patents, but that's another story.
My Sony vaio r505gc with extended battery does 6-7 hours under Linux without much trouble. But that's under GNU/Linux ;) If I really squeeze: dimmed backlight, just text processing etc. I get 7-8 hours. Naturally compiling sources will bite into the battery quite seriously.
Under Win2k it's a bit less impressive I never get more than 4-5 hours. You see the bitches at Sony don;t care about their customers so the powermanagement apps don;t really work too well under Win2k, only under XP. And as we know stock MS powermanagement is pretty poor.
So, off to ebay you lot for a sony R505 and an extended battery. Caveat: getting its wireless to work under GNU/Linux is a pain.
It seems to me that the large tech companies in the US have forgotten about doing things in a garage.
:)), a good secretary and 5 million of Suns dollars, you can build a *nix based system with a UI concept that goes well beyond the 25 year old Palo Alto/Finder concept we use now. One that will actually help us deal with the huge amounts of information we produce, consume and shift around our networks these days.
:(
I bet that with 4 decent OS coders, 2 OpenGL guru's, a clever UI designer (like me
But nobody ever listens to me... they seem to prefer coming back to tell that me I was right after all