Apple wrote an emulator - a GOOD one - and included it in System 7 (7.5, I believe). By 7.5.3 they basically had it working perfectly, and quickly.
I find it interesting to compare this with Windows. Apple took the more aggressive approach of deprecating old systems and facilitated the transitions with emulators. Conversely, Windows hasn't deprecated much and has gobs of legacy support built in.
Now, which company, Microsoft or Apple, offers the more stable and simpler operating environment? Anyone guessing Microsoft fails this test.
...its shocking what the 2 year failure rate is for the average PC.
Even more shocking is that my Consumer Reports Buying Guide (from my memory; I don't have it right now) says that PC failure rates are about 7 to 15 percent out of the box. This must be the failure rate where the tech support costs balance the cost of higher QA. Pretty sad, IMO.
Another excuse to let people believe that palladium is needed:/
Actually, I interpret these sorts of things to mean that a new Windows codebase is needed. Or, better, an operating system other than Windows is needed.
No one needs Palladium. If Microsoft cites their security problems in arguments for Palladium, then they are simply doing what they always have done: produce crap and then produce more crap to cover up the other crap they just produced. Palladium will just make their tower of crap so high and unstable, that the inevitable collapse will be the end of Microsoft as we know it.
There are assholes and idiots pretty much everywhere you go, so the more important question is: "Of the places I've seen and interviewed, at which one would I be the most comfortable, happiest, and productive?" Remember, interviews go both ways, so be sure to ask enough questions to ensure you are making the right choices. And the hardest thing: only you are qualified to make those choices, we can't make them for you.
i understand if you post a question to slashdot and it's sensitivity leads you to keep your company's identity a secret... but your country?
Actually, helping people begin certain types of advocacy without calling the Big Guys' attention to it can be a good thing. It might be best to help this person put forth a strong argument (if you agree with it, that is) to increase awareness of the issue no matter which country. Once people are aware of both sides of an issue, they are better equipped to make wise decisions.
However, this inquisitive person could as easily be one of the Big Guys' lackeys fishing for things to help refine their rebuttals and marketing tactics.
I agree with this. Programming matured quite a while ago, and most recent contributions have added only unneccessary complexity to what should be a tractable situation.
The last five years have introduced more acronyms, buzzwords, and brand names into my vocabulary than my brain can handle. Yet, what am I using on a daily basis? 20-year-old technology: vi, sh, sccs, make, etc. Relatively few new software technologies have really pushed beyond where we were in 1982, and many of those technologies are simply eye candy-enabled versions of what was around 10, 20, and even 30 years ago.
It seems we could be better off not reinventing the platform on which everything is built every five years. FORTRAN, C, C++, Java, C# all touted revolutionizing our lives. FORTRAN and C really did revolutionize things; they broke us free of assembly code. But what about the rest? Why is software quality about the same now as it always has been? It's because none of these newer platforms have changed the fundamental complexity of making good software. Writing software today still requires the same amount of "brains" as it did decades ago.
Hey! If that's true, can't sun sue them for use of a trademarked acronym?
Not quite, since Java is widely implemented. Sun doesn't expend time and money trying to make these implementations incompatible; instead, Sun wants them to be compatible and has test suites available for that purpose. Conversely, Microsoft has a history of prefering their implementation over any others and works hard to drive other implementations into obscurity. Only time will tell if history will repeat itself with respect to efforts such as Mono.
...do you REALLY expect to get EVERYTHING for free?
No, but I do consider the amount of risk associated with a technology..NET provides a one-way ticket to the Microsoft Village; if you are comfortable with that, then, by all means, use C# and be happy. Those people looking for multiple-vendor technologies (i.e., lower risk technologies) should look elsewhere.
interference from lightning? Wouldn't the loud electrical noise from a nearby thunderstorm be more dangerous than low-power devices used by passengers? How about solar storms?
As far as what passengers use, wouldn't covering the back of the cockpit with grounded aluminum foil prevent the interference from laptops etc.?
...what happens when better integration prevents you from being able to "chip" a machine?
Anyone out there know how much it would cost to put the important parts of a PC onto one chip using modern manufacturing techniques? This would mean anything significant to DRM (cpu, audio, and graphics) would need to be in one package soldered to the circuit board. I suppose it would have to include encrypted IDE and memory busses, too. If this can be done within the price ranges typcial for a PC, it will be done, and we really need to worry about it.
There's a reason why I think this is a Good Thing, and it goes beyond some stupid "Microsoft sucks, make them spend money!"
I stopped thinking the X-Box was a good thing once I saw "Microsoft". It doesn't matter what functions or specifications the X-Box has, because Microsoft is one company I will never invite back into my home.
Recommending the X-Box also means recommending: proprietary file formats, perverted standards, overwhelmingly aggressive business tactics, and Palladium. All good, right?
Re:The Constitution doesn't need amending
on
Want Freedom?
·
· Score: 1
Living in California is VERY different from living in South Carolina; it's like living in western Europe vs. living in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
The differences really aren't this extreme. Everyone basically sees the same things for entertainment, shops at the same stores, eats at the same restaurants, drives the same sorts of cars, studies the same sorts of things at school, and so on. I have known people from all over the country, and, outside of individual personalities, the biggest differences among us were our accents and how much rain our hometown got each year.
Most cultural differences I see really lie in history and not the present. For example, South Carolina has dozens of beautiful plantations from the 19th century, the Civil War started in Charleston Harbor, etc, but there really aren't many recent contributions to the culture that are uniquely South Carolinian. I'd say that the cultural evolutions in California and South Carolina in the last twenty years are more similar than different. Granted, they still have differences, but are they really as large in magnitude as they used to be? I really think the U.S. is converging.
Misaligned Priorities?
on
Want Freedom?
·
· Score: 2
I think the saddest aspect of 9/11 is how disproportionate public attention is towards it relative to other things. For example, I genuinely fear a naturally-occurring Flu epidemic more than anything some religious whackos can dish out.
Could the billions of dollars spent arbitrarily in the intrest of homeland security be better spent on improving the very foundations of our country? Good examples include finding ways of building a truly sustainable health care system or performing safety audits of our nation's highways. It seems there are hundreds of causes more significant to our day-to-day lives than Osama and his cronies.
Certainly, the FBI and CIA should continue investigating, but doing so at the expense of so much else is simply not justified.
Re:The Constitution doesn't need amending
on
Want Freedom?
·
· Score: 2
From the above, it has been inferred that any kind of prayer in public schools is unconstitutional,...
Which it is, when all students are forced to participate.
...that putting the 10 Commandments on public property is unconstitutional,...
Which it is, since religions based entirely or partly on the Old Testament of the Bible are in no way special with regard to the U.S. Government.
...that pr0n is legal,...
As it should be.
...that a woman has the right to privacy and, consequently, the right to terminate pregnancy,...
Any right to abort pregnancy will always be debated, due to murder being legal nowhere in the U.S. The only thing people really can't agree on is at what stage is it actually murder. I don't see this being resolved any time soon on a state or federal level.
... that public libraries may not filter web sites...
And this is correct, as libraries are places of learning for everyone. No government can dictate what is and is not appropriate knowledge.
Perhaps these things occuring on a federal level are due to the diminishing distinction among states? People are so mobile and the U.S. becoming so homogenous that living in South Carolina vs. Illinois vs. California really is nothing unique nor special anymore.
"are there better notations out there that can further streamline the path from requirements to coding" is another way of saying, "I can draw a UML diagram, but I still need to think, isn't there some other way of doing it that cuts out the need to actually think entirely".
No, this isn't it at all. I'm just wondering if there is a way to capture requirements effectively (hard thinking intact) and have the results of that analysis in a form that can be dropped into the next phases of development. I'm not looking for magical solutions; I'm looking to cut out some of the redundant manual labor and the unnecessary buzzwords and fluff inherent to CASE tools.
Avoiding the issue by calling me "beyond help" does nothing more than make you look like an arrogant prick.
I've looked at UML, saw its array of different diagram types and wondered if there are better alternatives.
I'm not very knowledgable about it, but it seems there isn't a clear tracable path from the use cases right down to the source code. It seems that UML results in work that is thrown away when moving forward in a project. For example, if use cases really help in capturing requirements, why can't the work spent capturing requirements be directly applicable to the next stages of development (i.e., the requirements work drops right into the next stage without needing to manually recapture the requirements in the next stage)?
Is UML really more efficient than I think it is, or are there better notations out there that can further streamline the path from requirements to coding?
I was going to say that DDR is probably cheaper than dance lessons, but at a buck for three songs, it's probably not.
My wife and I looked into ballroom dance lessons in preparation for our wedding. Let's just say that once we saw the brochure with the price, we dropped that idea in less than a fraction of a second.
Dance lessons can run several hundred dollars just to learn the basics. A full run would cost thousands. Perhaps if we knew a friend of a friend who gave lessons, we could have found a cheaper solution, but that didn't surface as an option at the time.
So, if DDR is just $1 per play, then that is pretty cheap, in my opinion.
I disagree. I believe I am arguing for both GPL and non-GPL Open Source.
Let's say I write some software that has a proprietary set of algorithms, but I want to make the file format and its API open to everyone. Simple solution: keep the algorithms closed source and release the file format and its API under the GPL. My business wins and the community wins.
Let's say I write some software that I want businesses and hobbyists alike to use in their own software, but I'm not in it for money. Simple solution: I release my software under a BSD or LGPL license.
Let's say I write some software that I want any one to use for free, but I want to ensure it can't be made proprietary. Simple solution: I release my software under a GPL license.
Any of these paths can lead to a success story, but success isn't necessarily defined by huge popularity or seven-digit incomes. Here, the author chooses a desitiny for the software and, if the author is satisfied with the outcome, then the software is successful. What drives the author's satisfaction is something we can't define here.
Try this -> open netscape, double-click the '-' button(closes current window). The second click is used to close the current window and is _also_ sent to a lower window.
I'm using CDE 1.4 and wasn't able to reproduce this.
I also have problems with applications stealing focus, and the window manager making a window occupy all workspaces at once.
These do happen occasionally, but I'm so used to them that I reflexively correct them as they happen. The problem of some windows switching desktops for no reason is probably the most common.
Right, if you ignore the focus problems, the motif problems, the apps that come with it and the fact that sun and HP have both ditched it for gnome.
I've been using CDE for years...I guess I just don't notice these problems. Perhaps they really aren't problems but are just differences relative to other desktops?
I have found CDE be a very useful very no-frills desktop. It doesn't really need to have any eye candy, and it is good enough for me to get done what I need to get done.
Regarding GNOME, I do look forward to the migration to GNOME, but only after they have worked everything out to make GNOME a low-risk transition. I'm willing to be patient about this.
But in practice, we're just not seeing all the innovation that you would expect.
What innovation are you expecting? Are you looking to be swept off your feet by the next handsome OS that you see in the elevator?
Linux and GNOME are a unique twist on the old idea of a UNIX desktop. Linux has matured a great deal over the years to rival old giants like Microsoft, and GNOME has become a very good desktop environment for many people. While they aren't earth-shatteringly innovative, they provide some relief from the stagnant mainstream desktops out there.
Then there are the countless tools that made my life livable over the years: GCC, gnuplot, ghostscript, Emacs, LaTeX, ispell, XFree86, Mozilla, and OpenOffice.org for my desktop, and sendmail, apache, and BIND on the servers. There are many many many more tools that I won't take the time to list out, but that doesn't mean they aren't there doing their part.
Many Open Source software projects are not truly innovative but provide best-of-breed implementations of standard protocols. Nearly all of the standard Internet protocols have been implemented for Linux and the BSDs. Ones like Apache steal the show, and ones like the BSD TCP/IP stack are "borrowed" by smart and successful people like Microsoft.
Perhaps the biggest contribution of Open Source is properly moving things into the "public domain" after no longer being commercially worthwhile or after becoming commodities. The protocol implementations I mentioned certainly fall into this category. For example, I seriously think the idea of a commercial web browser is obselete, and ones like Internet Explorer really serve to hold back progress rather than help it.
Another way that Open Source contributes in ways that companies can't is to provide uncorrupted software. By "corrupted" I mean: integrated DRM, proprietary file formats, proprietary communications protocols, unfair EULAs, and any other blatant company or government-driven attempt to limit what computers can do. The frequent advocacy by Open Source enthusiasts for open file formats is one way to drive innovation that really can be earth-shattering (imagine a world without.doc!).
So, I'm not sure what you're looking for, but I'm pretty convinced that there is more innovation occuring than we can shake a stick at. It isn't always suprising, revolutionary, or even obvious, but to say it isn't happening is to be in denial.
CDE is just fine. It is pretty simple, quite configurable, and very well documented. It is also pretty ugly compared to other desktops, but aesthetics wasn't the main motivation behind its design. It is, simply, a workstation desktop.
Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I'd like to see proof if there's any *nix distrobution that is 100% bug free or has absolutely no security vulnerabilities.
Almost no piece of software, UNIX included, is bug free. However, in UNIX, I can isolate my web browser, for example, to run in an unprivileged user account, even with a faked root directory, to ensure the occasional HTML or JavaScript hack doesn't compromise any other part of my system. Granted, not many people do this, but at least there is the option of doing this, for those people who really care about security. Also, most companies behind UNIX implementations don't have creepy EULAs like those from Microsoft.
Honestly, if windows is so bad, so full of bugs, why does it keep selling? Lack of alternative?
Yes. You may find this suprising, but most people simply don't percieve that there is something other than Windows. Microsoft has so successfully driven competition out of the consumer PC market that most people don't even think "well, maybe I'll try a Mac". They simply default on the choice of Windows.
Also, look around at the meager selection of operating systems. Only the Mac OS truly is as "user friendly" as Windows. All other attempts at commercial user-friendly systems have been crushed by Microsoft. Now, only things like GNOME and KDE remain to add to the MS and Apple duo, but these efforts are still several years from maturity.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple wrote an emulator - a GOOD one - and included it in System 7 (7.5, I believe). By 7.5.3 they basically had it working perfectly, and quickly.
I find it interesting to compare this with Windows. Apple took the more aggressive approach of deprecating old systems and facilitated the transitions with emulators. Conversely, Windows hasn't deprecated much and has gobs of legacy support built in.
Now, which company, Microsoft or Apple, offers the more stable and simpler operating environment? Anyone guessing Microsoft fails this test.
...its shocking what the 2 year failure rate is for the average PC.
Even more shocking is that my Consumer Reports Buying Guide (from my memory; I don't have it right now) says that PC failure rates are about 7 to 15 percent out of the box. This must be the failure rate where the tech support costs balance the cost of higher QA. Pretty sad, IMO.
Another excuse to let people believe that palladium is needed :/
Actually, I interpret these sorts of things to mean that a new Windows codebase is needed. Or, better, an operating system other than Windows is needed.
No one needs Palladium. If Microsoft cites their security problems in arguments for Palladium, then they are simply doing what they always have done: produce crap and then produce more crap to cover up the other crap they just produced. Palladium will just make their tower of crap so high and unstable, that the inevitable collapse will be the end of Microsoft as we know it.
There are assholes and idiots pretty much everywhere you go, so the more important question is: "Of the places I've seen and interviewed, at which one would I be the most comfortable, happiest, and productive?" Remember, interviews go both ways, so be sure to ask enough questions to ensure you are making the right choices. And the hardest thing: only you are qualified to make those choices, we can't make them for you.
i understand if you post a question to slashdot and it's sensitivity leads you to keep your company's identity a secret... but your country?
Actually, helping people begin certain types of advocacy without calling the Big Guys' attention to it can be a good thing. It might be best to help this person put forth a strong argument (if you agree with it, that is) to increase awareness of the issue no matter which country. Once people are aware of both sides of an issue, they are better equipped to make wise decisions.
However, this inquisitive person could as easily be one of the Big Guys' lackeys fishing for things to help refine their rebuttals and marketing tactics.
An interesting dilemma, ain't it?
Market full of suckers.
I agree with this. Programming matured quite a while ago, and most recent contributions have added only unneccessary complexity to what should be a tractable situation.
The last five years have introduced more acronyms, buzzwords, and brand names into my vocabulary than my brain can handle. Yet, what am I using on a daily basis? 20-year-old technology: vi, sh, sccs, make, etc. Relatively few new software technologies have really pushed beyond where we were in 1982, and many of those technologies are simply eye candy-enabled versions of what was around 10, 20, and even 30 years ago.
It seems we could be better off not reinventing the platform on which everything is built every five years. FORTRAN, C, C++, Java, C# all touted revolutionizing our lives. FORTRAN and C really did revolutionize things; they broke us free of assembly code. But what about the rest? Why is software quality about the same now as it always has been? It's because none of these newer platforms have changed the fundamental complexity of making good software. Writing software today still requires the same amount of "brains" as it did decades ago.
Hey! If that's true, can't sun sue them for use of a trademarked acronym?
...do you REALLY expect to get EVERYTHING for free?
.NET provides a one-way ticket to the Microsoft Village; if you are comfortable with that, then, by all means, use C# and be happy. Those people looking for multiple-vendor technologies (i.e., lower risk technologies) should look elsewhere.
Not quite, since Java is widely implemented. Sun doesn't expend time and money trying to make these implementations incompatible; instead, Sun wants them to be compatible and has test suites available for that purpose. Conversely, Microsoft has a history of prefering their implementation over any others and works hard to drive other implementations into obscurity. Only time will tell if history will repeat itself with respect to efforts such as Mono.
No, but I do consider the amount of risk associated with a technology.
Could you also warn us with --childish post-- so we can skip your posts, please?
No.
C# is obviously the future of .NET programming
.NET is the future of the internet
.NET is an acronym for "Proprietary Lock-In". Keep this in mind as you learn C# and immerse yourself into the .NET "experience".
Perhaps.
Absolutely not.
interference from lightning? Wouldn't the loud electrical noise from a nearby thunderstorm be more dangerous than low-power devices used by passengers? How about solar storms?
As far as what passengers use, wouldn't covering the back of the cockpit with grounded aluminum foil prevent the interference from laptops etc.?
...what happens when better integration prevents you from being able to "chip" a machine?
Anyone out there know how much it would cost to put the important parts of a PC onto one chip using modern manufacturing techniques? This would mean anything significant to DRM (cpu, audio, and graphics) would need to be in one package soldered to the circuit board. I suppose it would have to include encrypted IDE and memory busses, too. If this can be done within the price ranges typcial for a PC, it will be done, and we really need to worry about it.
There's a reason why I think this is a Good Thing, and it goes beyond some stupid "Microsoft sucks, make them spend money!"
I stopped thinking the X-Box was a good thing once I saw "Microsoft". It doesn't matter what functions or specifications the X-Box has, because Microsoft is one company I will never invite back into my home.
Recommending the X-Box also means recommending: proprietary file formats, perverted standards, overwhelmingly aggressive business tactics, and Palladium. All good, right?
Living in California is VERY different from living in South Carolina; it's like living in western Europe vs. living in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
The differences really aren't this extreme. Everyone basically sees the same things for entertainment, shops at the same stores, eats at the same restaurants, drives the same sorts of cars, studies the same sorts of things at school, and so on. I have known people from all over the country, and, outside of individual personalities, the biggest differences among us were our accents and how much rain our hometown got each year.
Most cultural differences I see really lie in history and not the present. For example, South Carolina has dozens of beautiful plantations from the 19th century, the Civil War started in Charleston Harbor, etc, but there really aren't many recent contributions to the culture that are uniquely South Carolinian. I'd say that the cultural evolutions in California and South Carolina in the last twenty years are more similar than different. Granted, they still have differences, but are they really as large in magnitude as they used to be? I really think the U.S. is converging.
I think the saddest aspect of 9/11 is how disproportionate public attention is towards it relative to other things. For example, I genuinely fear a naturally-occurring Flu epidemic more than anything some religious whackos can dish out.
Could the billions of dollars spent arbitrarily in the intrest of homeland security be better spent on improving the very foundations of our country? Good examples include finding ways of building a truly sustainable health care system or performing safety audits of our nation's highways. It seems there are hundreds of causes more significant to our day-to-day lives than Osama and his cronies.
Certainly, the FBI and CIA should continue investigating, but doing so at the expense of so much else is simply not justified.
From the above, it has been inferred that any kind of prayer in public schools is unconstitutional,...
...that putting the 10 Commandments on public property is unconstitutional,...
...that pr0n is legal,...
...that a woman has the right to privacy and, consequently, the right to terminate pregnancy,...
... that public libraries may not filter web sites...
Which it is, when all students are forced to participate.
Which it is, since religions based entirely or partly on the Old Testament of the Bible are in no way special with regard to the U.S. Government.
As it should be.
Any right to abort pregnancy will always be debated, due to murder being legal nowhere in the U.S. The only thing people really can't agree on is at what stage is it actually murder. I don't see this being resolved any time soon on a state or federal level.
And this is correct, as libraries are places of learning for everyone. No government can dictate what is and is not appropriate knowledge.
Perhaps these things occuring on a federal level are due to the diminishing distinction among states? People are so mobile and the U.S. becoming so homogenous that living in South Carolina vs. Illinois vs. California really is nothing unique nor special anymore.
yea you could call it a troll, but i have to say this isnt really like slashdot.
Well, perhaps I'm not as suprised, now, that these didn't make it: the RIAA website defaced Wednesday; a possible class-action lawsuit against Microsoft
"are there better notations out there that can further streamline the path from requirements to coding" is another way of saying, "I can draw a UML diagram, but I still need to think, isn't there some other way of doing it that cuts out the need to actually think entirely".
No, this isn't it at all. I'm just wondering if there is a way to capture requirements effectively (hard thinking intact) and have the results of that analysis in a form that can be dropped into the next phases of development. I'm not looking for magical solutions; I'm looking to cut out some of the redundant manual labor and the unnecessary buzzwords and fluff inherent to CASE tools.
Avoiding the issue by calling me "beyond help" does nothing more than make you look like an arrogant prick.
I've looked at UML, saw its array of different diagram types and wondered if there are better alternatives.
I'm not very knowledgable about it, but it seems there isn't a clear tracable path from the use cases right down to the source code. It seems that UML results in work that is thrown away when moving forward in a project. For example, if use cases really help in capturing requirements, why can't the work spent capturing requirements be directly applicable to the next stages of development (i.e., the requirements work drops right into the next stage without needing to manually recapture the requirements in the next stage)?
Is UML really more efficient than I think it is, or are there better notations out there that can further streamline the path from requirements to coding?
I was going to say that DDR is probably cheaper than dance lessons, but at a buck for three songs, it's probably not.
My wife and I looked into ballroom dance lessons in preparation for our wedding. Let's just say that once we saw the brochure with the price, we dropped that idea in less than a fraction of a second.
Dance lessons can run several hundred dollars just to learn the basics. A full run would cost thousands. Perhaps if we knew a friend of a friend who gave lessons, we could have found a cheaper solution, but that didn't surface as an option at the time.
So, if DDR is just $1 per play, then that is pretty cheap, in my opinion.
you clearly argue against GPL...
I disagree. I believe I am arguing for both GPL and non-GPL Open Source.
Let's say I write some software that has a proprietary set of algorithms, but I want to make the file format and its API open to everyone. Simple solution: keep the algorithms closed source and release the file format and its API under the GPL. My business wins and the community wins.
Let's say I write some software that I want businesses and hobbyists alike to use in their own software, but I'm not in it for money. Simple solution: I release my software under a BSD or LGPL license.
Let's say I write some software that I want any one to use for free, but I want to ensure it can't be made proprietary. Simple solution: I release my software under a GPL license.
Any of these paths can lead to a success story, but success isn't necessarily defined by huge popularity or seven-digit incomes. Here, the author chooses a desitiny for the software and, if the author is satisfied with the outcome, then the software is successful. What drives the author's satisfaction is something we can't define here.
Try this -> open netscape, double-click the '-' button(closes current window). The second click is used to close the current window and is _also_ sent to a lower window.
I'm using CDE 1.4 and wasn't able to reproduce this.
I also have problems with applications stealing focus, and the window manager making a window occupy all workspaces at once.
These do happen occasionally, but I'm so used to them that I reflexively correct them as they happen. The problem of some windows switching desktops for no reason is probably the most common.
Right, if you ignore the focus problems, the motif problems, the apps that come with it and the fact that sun and HP have both ditched it for gnome.
I've been using CDE for years...I guess I just don't notice these problems. Perhaps they really aren't problems but are just differences relative to other desktops?
I have found CDE be a very useful very no-frills desktop. It doesn't really need to have any eye candy, and it is good enough for me to get done what I need to get done.
Regarding GNOME, I do look forward to the migration to GNOME, but only after they have worked everything out to make GNOME a low-risk transition. I'm willing to be patient about this.
But in practice, we're just not seeing all the innovation that you would expect.
.doc!).
What innovation are you expecting? Are you looking to be swept off your feet by the next handsome OS that you see in the elevator?
Linux and GNOME are a unique twist on the old idea of a UNIX desktop. Linux has matured a great deal over the years to rival old giants like Microsoft, and GNOME has become a very good desktop environment for many people. While they aren't earth-shatteringly innovative, they provide some relief from the stagnant mainstream desktops out there.
Then there are the countless tools that made my life livable over the years: GCC, gnuplot, ghostscript, Emacs, LaTeX, ispell, XFree86, Mozilla, and OpenOffice.org for my desktop, and sendmail, apache, and BIND on the servers. There are many many many more tools that I won't take the time to list out, but that doesn't mean they aren't there doing their part.
Many Open Source software projects are not truly innovative but provide best-of-breed implementations of standard protocols. Nearly all of the standard Internet protocols have been implemented for Linux and the BSDs. Ones like Apache steal the show, and ones like the BSD TCP/IP stack are "borrowed" by smart and successful people like Microsoft.
Perhaps the biggest contribution of Open Source is properly moving things into the "public domain" after no longer being commercially worthwhile or after becoming commodities. The protocol implementations I mentioned certainly fall into this category. For example, I seriously think the idea of a commercial web browser is obselete, and ones like Internet Explorer really serve to hold back progress rather than help it.
Another way that Open Source contributes in ways that companies can't is to provide uncorrupted software. By "corrupted" I mean: integrated DRM, proprietary file formats, proprietary communications protocols, unfair EULAs, and any other blatant company or government-driven attempt to limit what computers can do. The frequent advocacy by Open Source enthusiasts for open file formats is one way to drive innovation that really can be earth-shattering (imagine a world without
So, I'm not sure what you're looking for, but I'm pretty convinced that there is more innovation occuring than we can shake a stick at. It isn't always suprising, revolutionary, or even obvious, but to say it isn't happening is to be in denial.
And CDE is still unusable.
CDE is just fine. It is pretty simple, quite configurable, and very well documented. It is also pretty ugly compared to other desktops, but aesthetics wasn't the main motivation behind its design. It is, simply, a workstation desktop.
Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I'd like to see proof if there's any *nix distrobution that is 100% bug free or has absolutely no security vulnerabilities.
Almost no piece of software, UNIX included, is bug free. However, in UNIX, I can isolate my web browser, for example, to run in an unprivileged user account, even with a faked root directory, to ensure the occasional HTML or JavaScript hack doesn't compromise any other part of my system. Granted, not many people do this, but at least there is the option of doing this, for those people who really care about security. Also, most companies behind UNIX implementations don't have creepy EULAs like those from Microsoft.
Honestly, if windows is so bad, so full of bugs, why does it keep selling? Lack of alternative?
Yes. You may find this suprising, but most people simply don't percieve that there is something other than Windows. Microsoft has so successfully driven competition out of the consumer PC market that most people don't even think "well, maybe I'll try a Mac". They simply default on the choice of Windows.
Also, look around at the meager selection of operating systems. Only the Mac OS truly is as "user friendly" as Windows. All other attempts at commercial user-friendly systems have been crushed by Microsoft. Now, only things like GNOME and KDE remain to add to the MS and Apple duo, but these efforts are still several years from maturity.