If the widespread use of GNU or Linux is the ultimate goal of our community, we should logically applaud all applications that run on it, whether free or not.
But if our goal is freedom, that changes everything.
Funny, I think the goal of the community should be to make good software. I use GNU utils all the time. I'm on Linux as I type this. I use them because they are, as the parent says, a tool I use to get my job done.
Popularity is great, but Windows is popular, so we all know it's not everything. Freedom is good, too, but freedom to use crap isn't very useful. By making FLOSS a good 'product', you achieve all the goals presented: your job gets done, other people use the tools because they're good, and you and those other people all have 'rights' to the software that serve to perpetiate the benefits. RMS needs to understand that even if 'libre' is more important than 'gratis,' it's still just a secondary goal, forever beneath 'quality'.
DOS Machines are by far the more popular, with about 70 million in use. Mac users, on the other hand, may note that cockroaches far outnumber humans, and that numbers alone do not denote a higher life form....
"Where do you want to go today" sold computers, it sold windows and increased his market share. unix needs a "where do you want to go today" why? because no normal computer gives a crap about where the source came from.
I propose:
Alright, you can go ahead and make your millions supporting Win98. But here's a few less painful ways to make a living:
1) Break your own legs in front of audiences. Every night. 2) Test new versions of salt and its ability to make paper cuts hurt. 3) Test the newest Windows UIs until your eyes bleed. Part time only; no one could do an eight-hour day. 4) Try to get Mobsters to pay protection money. 5) Become a mercenary and invade China. Alone. 6) Do an undercover report on how to get out of a Mexican Prison by doing so first hand.
It's called a boondoggle: you pay people lots of money that doesn't technically exist for a project no one technically needs, and the money you inject in the economy starts the engine turning again.
Those of us who live in LA can thank boondoggling for most of our freeways. Boondoggling built many public parks. Tennessee has dams because of boondoggling. The Great Depression was on it's way out because of boondoggling, when that greatest boondoggle of all came along: World War II.
It's an old practice, and it's worked many times before. It might just work this time.
It only applies to consumer electronics that ship with a FAT filesystem on their harddrives.
Hrm, what wildly popular consumer electornic device ships with a hard drive that is FAT-formatted, but doesn't currently ship all of its revinue to Redmond?
How about storing Applications in a single, sensible, standard place?
Right now there's/bin,/sbin/opt/bin,/usr/bin,/usr/local/bin, and all the rest. They all have slightly varying meanings, which most users don't care about at all.
Take a page from OS X, and attack from two angles:
1) differentiate Applications from executables. Apps use the GUI, executables the CLI.
2) make a directory called/apps. In there, have the Applications that users will want to use. This gives newbies a single, centralized location to look and discover the wide array of applications at their fingertips (recognizable by thier colorful, informative icons and names that aren't acronyms). Whenever you go there in your file browser, you can double-click any application and its window(s) come up. When you're in the CLI, you can call an app like any executable, and it will launch it's window just the same. Applications that have no dependencies (really, the majority of them) can be dragged and dropped into/apps. Those that don't can use installers or tarballs to do what they need to. For bonus points, adopt the package system from OS X (nee NeXTSTEP) and live life the way it should be, with drag-and-drop installs for 99% of apps. This isn't a pipe dream: I do it every day.
Instead of doing this, Linux is falling into the same trap that Windows is mired in; it puts a big hierarchal list in the 'Start Button' (or whatever your distro calls it) and expects people to navigate through that. I can think of little that is more annoying that attempting this. Digging three levels deep to find a calculator is a chore. Finding where the distro hides Mozilla is a pain. Determining how to add and remove things from the menu is harder than Windows, where a drag and drop or a right-click will do.
We don't need any of that cruft; simply make a new root-level directory and fire away.
As an aside, this is why Linux people tend to think UIs are bad: because the UIs that you use everyday are. This is a perfect example of hiding complexity that doesn't need to exist. If all the apps are in/applications, the problems that plague application installation simply vanish.
Future applications: applications could check for a wildcard A record, detect synthesized data in a response and take appropriate action...
Anyone know of any good (preferably Open-Source) burn-down-Verisign's-headquarters software? I'm interested in embedding it in all my future applications.
No more cars, because crooks could get away from bank heists!
No more pencils, because bad people might write naughty words.
You guys are applying the DMCA mindset: if it could be used for ill, it will be, so all uses should be illegal.
Let the technology out, and let the world decide how it can be used. If it's being abused, stop the abuse. If it's helping mankind (or just parents and dogowners), it's one little part of our lives that's a little better.
But please, don't paint everything with a mile-wide brush.
This type of thing screams 'AppleScript!' take a look over at Apple's Site
It's a high-level, object-oriented, event-driven, event-driving scripting language that should be able to automate what you're trying to do. Most AppleScripters consider it Apple's secret weapon.
Something that software is unique in is that the primary tool to build software is software. You don't use a 2001 car to build the 2002 model. You don't use the Empire State Building to build the World Trade Center. But you use Visual Studio to build JojoApp v3.5, and Microsoft uses Visual Studio 6.0 to build Visual Studio.NET.
So all of our software is very literally tied to it's past, because we very rarely start from scratch and build up from the ISA to an application that works. And lo and behold, when we do (like with cell phone OSes), we achieve pretty stable results that do what they do well, even when what they're doing *is* revolutionary.
Has anyone noticed that bash is suspiciously absent from the default install of OS X?
The reason-- and this is the official line-- is that bash is GPL.
Guess what? So's Chimera.
As much as Slashdot is a GPL-fest, it remains to be seen what companies can and can't do with GPL'd software. And yes, that includes whether they can ship it or not.
Another issue is that they'd have to ship the code. A/src directory is not really something you'd expect to find in a consumer OS. Maybe they could mirror it online as a download, but that's been questioned before, too.
So for now Apple has decided to err on the side of safety and not ship. I doubt that they will change their ways for a browser.
I think what they're trying to say isn't "We can use this browser, so be scared Microsoft" but more "We have access to a vast amount of open-source code that compiles on our OS-- and looks damn nice-- with minimal development effort." And I support the latter more than the former.
I agree that the quote is silly. Of course they're subsidizing Microsoft. But on the availability of code I'm going to disagree with you.
Yes, they are available to everyone, but only in as much as Microsoft's Shared Source is available.: you can look, but don't touch.
Just like you can't use Microsoft's shared source code in your next project (or use the CIFS docs in your GPL), Microsoft can't use your GPL for their next OS release.
The road goes two ways, and you are being just as discriminatory as they are.
Apple is betting on three things, one old, one that just became obvious, and one new.
The old one is style, which in a way is always new. They're going to continue to outpace themselves in this area because they have to- the gee whiz factor is what keeps some people buying. Sure you have a translucent sea-blue space egg on your desk, but do you have a semisphere and a "floating" LCD?
The one that just became obvious is the iApps. They're really pushing iTunes as the best MP3 player out there, and I admit that I haven't seen anything that touches it on either platform. iPhoto (arrange your digital pictures) is amazing, but it needs to evolve a little. It's missing some obvious features, but it's really unmatched for what it does. iMovie for video editing consistently blows the pants off of the reviewers, even if the reviewers are hardcore anti-mac guys. There is just nothing that matches the ease of use of the thing-- I mean, my Mom uses it. iDVD is again in a class by itself: no one else has a technology that burns DVDs with so little fuss.
And that brings us to the new strategy, DVD burning. The SuperDrive (which burns CDs, too) is trickling down Apple's product line-- it now comes as a BTO on any PowerMac, and on the highest iMac. Apple has sold more than half a million of these things, and they're not slowing down.
So that's the news from the Apple front... where is Microsoft going today?
Slashdot Mirror
Step one is to stop referring to yourself as a 'potential' high school graduate.
Funny, I think the goal of the community should be to make good software . I use GNU utils all the time. I'm on Linux as I type this. I use them because they are, as the parent says, a tool I use to get my job done.
Popularity is great, but Windows is popular, so we all know it's not everything. Freedom is good, too, but freedom to use crap isn't very useful. By making FLOSS a good 'product', you achieve all the goals presented: your job gets done, other people use the tools because they're good, and you and those other people all have 'rights' to the software that serve to perpetiate the benefits. RMS needs to understand that even if 'libre' is more important than 'gratis,' it's still just a secondary goal, forever beneath 'quality'.
Yellowist!
(If you don't get it, RTFA).
This is true. Score one for the Mac.
(b) PC is like a Dodge Neon, Mac is like a BMW
Also true. Score: Mac 2, PC 0
(c) Mac has no games
Unfortunately true. I'll add the corollary that PCs do have games. Score: Mac 2, PC 1
(d) Windows XP: DRM
Again, true. Again, addendum that Mac != DRM. Score: Mac 3, PC 1
(e) Linux has no games
Also true. This means that the one point the PC has doesn't count on Linux. Score: Mac 3, Windows 1, Linux 0
(f) X windows sucks
Very true. Give a point to all non-X platforms. Score: Mac 4, Windows 2, Linux 0
Man, we should do this more often!
Mac users, on the other hand, may note that cockroaches far outnumber
humans, and that numbers alone do not denote a higher life form....
New York Times, 1991
These pictures are clearly from the 70s; the cities are purple and the rest of it is neon green. Obviously the work of blacklights.
Alright, you can go ahead and make your millions supporting Win98. But here's a few less painful ways to make a living:
1) Break your own legs in front of audiences. Every night.
2) Test new versions of salt and its ability to make paper cuts hurt.
3) Test the newest Windows UIs until your eyes bleed. Part time only; no one could do an eight-hour day.
4) Try to get Mobsters to pay protection money.
5) Become a mercenary and invade China. Alone.
6) Do an undercover report on how to get out of a Mexican Prison by doing so first hand.
Good luck!
It's called a boondoggle: you pay people lots of money that doesn't technically exist for a project no one technically needs, and the money you inject in the economy starts the engine turning again.
Those of us who live in LA can thank boondoggling for most of our freeways. Boondoggling built many public parks. Tennessee has dams because of boondoggling. The Great Depression was on it's way out because of boondoggling, when that greatest boondoggle of all came along: World War II.
It's an old practice, and it's worked many times before. It might just work this time.
It only applies to consumer electronics that ship with a FAT filesystem on their harddrives.
Hrm, what wildly popular consumer electornic device ships with a hard drive that is FAT-formatted, but doesn't currently ship all of its revinue to Redmond?
iPod, welcome to the world of the Microsoft Tax.
Oh, come on: you've seen SciFi movies!
Paper goes away and is replaced by transparencies, which we read instead!
How about storing Applications in a single, sensible, standard place?
/bin, /sbin /opt/bin, /usr/bin, /usr/local/bin, and all the rest. They all have slightly varying meanings, which most users don't care about at all.
/apps. In there, have the Applications that users will want to use. This gives newbies a single, centralized location to look and discover the wide array of applications at their fingertips (recognizable by thier colorful, informative icons and names that aren't acronyms). Whenever you go there in your file browser, you can double-click any application and its window(s) come up. When you're in the CLI, you can call an app like any executable, and it will launch it's window just the same. Applications that have no dependencies (really, the majority of them) can be dragged and dropped into /apps. Those that don't can use installers or tarballs to do what they need to. For bonus points, adopt the package system from OS X (nee NeXTSTEP) and live life the way it should be, with drag-and-drop installs for 99% of apps. This isn't a pipe dream: I do it every day.
/applications, the problems that plague application installation simply vanish.
Right now there's
Take a page from OS X, and attack from two angles:
1) differentiate Applications from executables. Apps use the GUI, executables the CLI.
2) make a directory called
Instead of doing this, Linux is falling into the same trap that Windows is mired in; it puts a big hierarchal list in the 'Start Button' (or whatever your distro calls it) and expects people to navigate through that. I can think of little that is more annoying that attempting this. Digging three levels deep to find a calculator is a chore. Finding where the distro hides Mozilla is a pain. Determining how to add and remove things from the menu is harder than Windows, where a drag and drop or a right-click will do.
We don't need any of that cruft; simply make a new root-level directory and fire away.
As an aside, this is why Linux people tend to think UIs are bad: because the UIs that you use everyday are. This is a perfect example of hiding complexity that doesn't need to exist. If all the apps are in
Until AI becomes flexible enough to challenge us in arenas like art and music, what would be a better real-life competition?
That would be the Turing Test.
The comma. It really shouldn't be there.
Anyone know of any good (preferably Open-Source) burn-down-Verisign's-headquarters software? I'm interested in embedding it in all my future applications.
You can if your personal faith just happens to be right.
>They get it for free, but they also lose it any time
>someone wants to take it away, for any specific domain.
Really?
Well, I'm off to buy verisign.com, then!
I fear the geeks, even when they bring GIFs.
No more email, because people can spam you!
No more cars, because crooks could get away from bank heists!
No more pencils, because bad people might write naughty words.
You guys are applying the DMCA mindset: if it could be used for ill, it will be, so all uses should be illegal.
Let the technology out, and let the world decide how it can be used. If it's being abused, stop the abuse. If it's helping mankind (or just parents and dogowners), it's one little part of our lives that's a little better.
But please, don't paint everything with a mile-wide brush.
No.
It's a high-level, object-oriented, event-driven, event-driving scripting language that should be able to automate what you're trying to do. Most AppleScripters consider it Apple's secret weapon.
Something that software is unique in is that the primary tool to build software is software. You don't use a 2001 car to build the 2002 model. You don't use the Empire State Building to build the World Trade Center. But you use Visual Studio to build JojoApp v3.5, and Microsoft uses Visual Studio 6.0 to build Visual Studio.NET.
So all of our software is very literally tied to it's past, because we very rarely start from scratch and build up from the ISA to an application that works. And lo and behold, when we do (like with cell phone OSes), we achieve pretty stable results that do what they do well, even when what they're doing *is* revolutionary.
Has anyone noticed that bash is suspiciously absent from the default install of OS X?
/src directory is not really something you'd expect to find in a consumer OS. Maybe they could mirror it online as a download, but that's been questioned before, too.
The reason-- and this is the official line-- is that bash is GPL.
Guess what? So's Chimera.
As much as Slashdot is a GPL-fest, it remains to be seen what companies can and can't do with GPL'd software. And yes, that includes whether they can ship it or not.
Another issue is that they'd have to ship the code. A
So for now Apple has decided to err on the side of safety and not ship. I doubt that they will change their ways for a browser.
I think what they're trying to say isn't "We can use this browser, so be scared Microsoft" but more "We have access to a vast amount of open-source code that compiles on our OS-- and looks damn nice-- with minimal development effort." And I support the latter more than the former.
I agree that the quote is silly. Of course they're subsidizing Microsoft. But on the availability of code I'm going to disagree with you.
Yes, they are available to everyone, but only in as much as Microsoft's Shared Source is available.: you can look, but don't touch.
Just like you can't use Microsoft's shared source code in your next project (or use the CIFS docs in your GPL), Microsoft can't use your GPL for their next OS release.
The road goes two ways, and you are being just as discriminatory as they are.
Apple is betting on three things, one old, one that just became obvious, and one new.
The old one is style, which in a way is always new. They're going to continue to outpace themselves in this area because they have to- the gee whiz factor is what keeps some people buying. Sure you have a translucent sea-blue space egg on your desk, but do you have a semisphere and a "floating" LCD?
The one that just became obvious is the iApps. They're really pushing iTunes as the best MP3 player out there, and I admit that I haven't seen anything that touches it on either platform. iPhoto (arrange your digital pictures) is amazing, but it needs to evolve a little. It's missing some obvious features, but it's really unmatched for what it does. iMovie for video editing consistently blows the pants off of the reviewers, even if the reviewers are hardcore anti-mac guys. There is just nothing that matches the ease of use of the thing-- I mean, my Mom uses it. iDVD is again in a class by itself: no one else has a technology that burns DVDs with so little fuss.
And that brings us to the new strategy, DVD burning. The SuperDrive (which burns CDs, too) is trickling down Apple's product line-- it now comes as a BTO on any PowerMac, and on the highest iMac. Apple has sold more than half a million of these things, and they're not slowing down.
So that's the news from the Apple front... where is Microsoft going today?