It is irritating to hear of companies doing this because basically they do it just to disrupt someones routine. These services cost the company very little to operate as they were being run on a cloud where where they consume insubstaintial resources and only when the services are actually used. Its hard to believe they will save anything from this.
X11 has never been difficult to use. The drivers have often been incomplete or unavailabne which made things hard to use for particular hardware, but this would have been a problem with no matter what window system, the driver situation would have been the same. Nearly all problems people have had are driver relelated and that has nothing to do with x11 itself but rather the lack of driver support for major hardware vendors. The driver issues have nothing to do with x11 itself so its improper to blame x11 for that.
And the reason Linux remains hostile to average users revolves around drivers. People want their hardware to just work and that means drivers are needed for hardware and Linux really should not be so hostile to hardware vendors that provide binary blob drivers.
What I have to say about touchscreen devices: these people are walking into stores saying "I'd like to trade in my desktop with its 20" screen, fullsize keyboard, mouse, surround sound, for a weak, puny device with a 4" screen and an on screen chiclet keyboard". That is sheer insanity. Touschscreens portables are a niche market, desktops are for people who do real work. Even a laptop is not equivalent to a desktop in ergonomics and comfort.
Many of these comments are really off from what I have seen having an in depth knowledge of X and Linux programming. It seems like many just say things without knowing what they are talking about. There are no useless libraries or interfaces in the X standard. You could use the core X graphics primatives to develop an application. Though, there are newer ones that do more. The old ones need to be there for backwards compatability, but the do not get in the way of addign new features. The 2D X graphics primitatives co-exist with DRI apps, and the 2D X graphics primatives can be ported to use the DRI backend by means of a DDX driver that uses DRI as its backend, which will help improve the interoperability of everything. Its the same with Linux itself, there are new APIs that have been added for new functionality but that older APIs can be easily supported without difficulty with good engineering. Adding extensions and new APIs while maintaining backwards compatability is essential to have a useable OS for real, actual users.
No need for X11R8. Just a protocol extension using the extension mechanism that was built in particularly for the purpose of extending X for these reasons.
At first I was concerned about Canonicals direction with its Window System. I think given some mitigation it will be manageable, only if a rootless Wayland server is available for Mir and a rootless Mir server available for Wayland to assure application cross compatability. . This will completely eliminate the possibility of a fractured platform. Otherwise, of course it will create problems.. Most distros will go Wayland and they should, they shouldnt allow Canonical to dictate the graphics stack to the rest of Linux
I found Ubuntu's Unity to simply be atrocious and I have a hard time believing that this is friendly for average users to use. Its just hard to find anything its the most frustrating thing. So, I would recommend after installing ubuntu, install KDE and try to use that and see if you like it better than Unity, or use Kubuntu.
I think Ubuntu would be better with rolling releases as well, with online updates these days it makes little sense to have the upgrades center around massive version upgrades but instead gradual updates over time. Versions would still be made but sort of could be a snapshot of the rolling release system at a certain time.
I am fine with a state/local sales tax but a federal sales tax is really a simply horrendous idea. We should actually shift more responsibilities to the states and therefore the states should collect more money. We should get the federal government out of things like education and health care. The states should be taking care of most issues such as health care and welfare needs, not the federal government. I do think that it would be okay for the federal government to charge a tax on interstate commerce designed to equalize the cost of importing something into a state and producing it in the state itself, since this would avoid states being penalized for the policies they implement by strategic business relocations. This would actually allow most of the things the federal government is now doing to be shifted to states. States should be allowed to find what solutions are best for the state, different states can optimize solutions according to their needs. Of course there would be no such tax on things produced and consumed within a state. There is no natural law that the federal government is a better place to do health care and education related things. In fact, its safer to do it at the safe level, if a bad policy is implemented at the federal level, it damages the entire country. If a state implements a bad policy it is limited to that state and easier to get away from. I do think people should be free to move to the state that they feel has the best policies.
How do you know where I am from? Don't jump to conclusions. I could be Japanese for all you know. But I know the stupid argument you are trying to make. And its wrong. There have been computer genetic studies of this. Northern Europeans form a genetic race that are very similar to each other. The fact is two white northern Europeans breeding will result in genuine white children with brown or blonde hair and blue eyes. Not so with a chinese or a black. You just cannot make an equivalence here.
Do you realize that people like you who do interracial breeding are contributing to the shrinkage or even destruction of our races. Do you know what this is called? Its called Genocide. Genocide does not need to be violent. All it needs to accomplish is the destruction of a race in whole or in part as a genetically distinct unit. I do not believe one race is better than another. I beleive in equal rights for everyone. But destroy our races through miscegenation? Goodness, no. I want to see all of humanities races preserved as unique, genetically distinct people, not destroy our races. Only hitler could love the idea of races being wiped out as genetically unique and distinct people. I think the time has come to restrict marriage to same race relationships to stop this genocidal destruction of humanities races.
Apparently you have never programmed with X11 , because that is one of the most stupid comments I have ever heard and bears no relation to reality.
The X protocol contains various graphics primatives, facilities for dealing with fonts, setting colors, color managment facilities, and so on. There are extensions for non-rectangular windows, for faster video, shared memory buffers, and other things that have become desired over the years. There is really nothing in X11 that an application could not use to render its user interface. Nothing really useless. It is concievable that an application could use all of the features the X server provides and use them well and many still do. So the feature are there because applications may need to use them and to make sure applications continue to be supported.
What has happened is that some x11 extensions have been offered that offer an alternative way to do things, such as with handling fonts. This added some capability, but the additional capability is not necessarily needed by all apps. Programs can still use the old way and things will be perfectly fine and functional.
The way you talk about things you make it sound like X is bloated. This is an old canard that goes back to the days when 1 MB was a lot of RAM. X is only bloated if your computer has 1 MB of RAM. X itself is lean, in fact, esp. in comparison to modern software like Firefox, taking only a few megabytes for the core protocol code. So basically, you want to remove what would amount some fraction of a megabyte of protocol code and break compatability with hundreds of applications. You sir are an idiot that no one ought to ever listen to.
You are right that for a long while, the API documentation sucked. They finally posted some, however. It looks good.
Wayland has been open compared to Canonicals process. They have had discussions on public mailing lists about it. There is a working code now as well. Yes it did take a while. I am not sure why, maybe they are perfectionists and were working out the details. They could have pushed out an early version and perfected things in later versions. But when you are dealing with an API, the API may need to be improved upon. When many applications have been targeted for an older version of the API, the you would need to have an extension mechanism and keep around support for the older API in a compatability layer glue code. So maybe they were trying to get the API right at the first go.
It would be a good idea. it would not require text only distributions to carry Wayland. If you have a Linux distro that is text only, then the GUI standards would not apply. If the distro does have a GUI, then wayland would be required by the standard.
Thats fine if its a word processor. The problem is that all applications rely on the Window System. You can choose your own word processor, and it affects little else. But, a bunch of incompatable window systems would be a disaster, it would actually take away your choices because now some software runs on window System A, but not window system B, so you end up not being able to use one block of software or another block of software. The good thing about X is that it has been used on all distributions, meaning you could run all Linux software on any Linux distribution, or on any other Unix OS, such as FreeBSD.
It is important to have standards. The same thing applies to web pages. If every person who made a web page decided to make their own incompatable HTML and use their browser to look at it, it means if you used another browser you could not get to their web page.
It is always a good idea to use a platform independant library to make porting between different platforms easier. Now that it is working on Wayland, one hopes that Ubuntus plans to fracture the Linux ecosystem can be averted. One thing that people need to remember about the situation situation with Canonicals arrogant plan to attempt a coup d'etat of the Linux graphics stack, is that unlike the window manager where choice is a good thing, having a lot of competing window systems is NOT a good thing. Lets imagine that Canonical announced that it would start using its own kernel, and that this Kernel would not support POSIX, but its own proprietary API. Now Linux applications would not be able to easily run on Ubuntu, and applications for Ubuntu would not be able to easily run on Linux. Having a bunch of incompatible window systems is as bad as that. The Window System is basically the kernel for GUI applications. Basically Canonicals Mir announcement is pretty much does the same, applications must talk to the Window system, so the Window system is as important as the kernel for application cross compatibility between OSs. Canonical is fracturing the Linux ecosystem and trying to greedily and arrogantly grab control of the Linux graphics stack and basically one of the most critical parts of the Linux ecosystem. Canonical's behaviour is outrageous and the Linux community should not tolerate this.
I think now is the time for other Linux Distros to commit to Wayland, leaving Canonical isolated.
We also need to start a petition to get Canonical to commit to wayland and stop trying to develop its own window system.
I also think that Wayland should be made a part of the Linux Standards Base. Perhaps the rights to use of the Linux trademark for companies such as Canonical who blatantly ignore Linux standards should be revoked.
Do people understand how absurdly unfeasible this is and how this article is basically spouting science fiction? If you tried to mine the moon, the material you mined would cost its weight in diaminds. Transport to the moon remains extremely cost-prohibitive and no concievable technology I have ever heard of can change that.
If we are talking about mining objects in space, anyway, it is worth pointing out its probably better to mine an asteroid which is more likely to be rich in the metals.
If there is no life there already, why no contaminate it with life, get something started there. As long as there is no life there already, it does not violate the prime directive (according to my copy of Starfleet manuals). I cant seem to see the harm in it.
The difference is that X has allowed all of the competion of toolkits, environments, etc, etc, while allowing the user to use the *nix of their choice, and being able to mix and match different gui parts. That is because X provides the standard common denominator that all of the applications support, so you could swap out the window manager and the applications wouldnt notice or care.
The beauty of X is that it did NOTHING at all in the area of putting graphics on the screen. it just provided a standard API for putting graphics on the screen. Since all apps supported the standard API, you could use whatever components you wanted together.
You could use KDE and Gnome apps together, and apps would run on any *nix OS without issues.
there is a danger of a situation now that, you may not be able to run some applications on a Linux distro because it has a different window system than the distro where the app was originally developed. There is an danger as well, that you may not be able to use a large number of applications on window system A, and not be able to use a a large number of apps on window system B, because some apps support A, and others support B, but will not run on both.
This is a terrible development. The splintering of the Linux desktop into a bunch of incompatable window systems is the last thing we need and which has been prevented for years by the X standard. While the Mir says it will support X applications, the threat comes from the fact that there may also be Mir applications which will not be able to run on other distributions, will not be able to run on X server root displays of other distributions. Another danger is not only Canonical trying to create a fleet of Mir only applications that cannot run on X server, but as well, end up creating a driver mess with drivers that can only run on Mir, or where driver vendors will now be faced with supporting many incompatable driver APIs for all of these windown systems, which will deter hardware vendors from supporting the platform.
The presents of so many incompatable window systems will simply make Linux appear to be a splintered, fractured platform that will appear impossible for hardware vendors to support.
Another problem with this Mir idea is that it takes away the ability of Linux users to continue to use their fine tuned, customized X desktops which so many have invested time in tailoring to their liking, and with their own choice of window manager.
I also find the name to be odd. Do they name it after a soviet space station as an indication that they are planning to take away our rights in a soviet style dictatorship? Canonical has been acting like a soviet style dictatorship that has forced its own obscene agendas on its users for years, including the Unity atrocity which is utterly antagonistic towards users. The Unity environment was designed to force on users some convuluted model of how things should work, as if Canonical has felt it needs to take away users freedom and force on users things that will cause them great pain and discomfort because the pain is good for them, as a price to pay for Canonicals fetish for bizarre and unueable user interfaces. It is sort of like how an interior decorator designs extremely uncomfortable furniture that inflicts misery on the users of that furniture, because to the interior decorator, such misery is a beautiful thing, they think that deprivations and discomfort have an aesthetic value to them.
Sadly, your example shows the level of intellectual functioning of many people these days. Mindless consumers of content who rarely are able to produce any significant coherent writing whatsoever, because thats all these tablets and such are good for .
For actual content creators with an IQ over 120, the desktop is not going anywhere. Its the best, most comfortable way to produce content, with a full size, free standing keyboard and a larger screen. A must for going to college and for work. I cannot imagine doing college work on a laptop, I know people do. But it is allows little flexibility for positioning of the screen and keyboard relative to each other. They also provide a much worse value as far as CPU and hard drive capacity per dollar.
Touch screen is ridiculous for work. The reason we use keyboards and mouse is so that the arm can rest on the desk. Using a touch screen at a desk continuously becomes uncomfortably very quickly.
I suggest the H1B program be abolished. This would force employers to actually hire and train american workers and would force them to be more flexible. Oh, and also lets do some tariffs to stop them from moving jobs overseas. Problem solved. As long as Employers can use H1B as a crutch they will pass up perfectly intelligent American workers.
The costs of the H!B program to our country are enormous. Not only is it damaging the identity and culture ogf the country by creating mini Indias and damaging the Western European identity of the country, but, also we do actually pay for this in ballooning welfare rolls. forcing companies to hire americans will actually save us money and bring down the federal debt by cutting down the welfare rolls. The tariffs will help us reduce our welfare rolls as well.
Another important thing I Have long suggested is that we provide a series of low cost education options for American workers including an expidited retraining program to fill IT jobs and government student loans for all Americans with improved forbearance and deferment mechanisms during unemployment.
Furthermore we should give much larger tax cuts to middle class families who have large numbers of children in order to solve our fertility crisis and increase the birth rate to above replacement level. People are basically not having enough kids and need to have far more than they are now.
The USA has a crisis of Americans having too few children, below what is needed to maintain replacement level fertility. it should be a focus of policy to get middle class fertility to above 2.3 to reverse and correct this serious problem which threatens the existance of pan-European civilisation.
Exactly, spot on. As I said, nearly all of these h1b applicants are unremarkable. Americans are every bit as capable and even more intelligent than these immigrants, and can easily be trained to do whatever these immigrants do Instead we are neglecting Americans, we are literally not spending on training Americans to do the work and lieu of that we bring in foreign labor which is not one bit more intelligent than Americans because corporations and our country does not want to provide opportunities and training for our own people. Many companies like to undercut american workers by hiring cheap third world labor that undercuts the American middle class. Many companies hire Indians are who are less intelligent than Americans, spent 1/60th of what an American did on their third world education, are not as well educated as Americans, and lie about their credentials, even coming up with fake Indian degrees.
They will, I repeat, will steal jobs from Americans and are very likely less intelligent than Americans. There is nothing that they can do that an American cannot, I gaurantee it. I do get very tired of people bringing up Einstein because 99.9%, if not all, of these people are not Einstien, and actually have IQs lower than most americans.
Why not give them an IQ test and require them to score above a 150 on the IQ test to get their visa? Because, the fact is, these immigrants are no more intelligent than americans but are willing to work for poverty third world wages. Period, end of story, full stop.
I do think America should focus on growing home grown talent and we should abolish the H1B program. Why not require H1B applications to pass an IQ test with a score over 150. Really, if they are Einstiens, they should not be afraid of that.
Why not give every immigrant and IQ test and require them to pass with a 150?
One of the posters above mentioned Stroustrup and Sergey Brinn. There is no doubt they are intelligent, but there are huge numbers of Americans that are just as intelligent, including myself. In fact, Americans have developed programming languages and have developed search engines, including myself. There is absolutely nothing remarkable about those two, I have done myself everything that they have accomplished.
I am absolutely certain we can train Americans to do every job that needs to be done and through homegrown talent we can absolutely maintain our edge.
I would add we should also have a society that idolizes scientists, engineers, doctors. Instead we have a society that idolizes airheads, pop star and entertainment icons, people like Beyonce, Britney Spears. One good thing that PBS actually does for us is that we do have a science program that probably does inspire more children to become scientists rather than to want to become basketball players or pop icons.
Having an imagination is an important part of intelligence. Being able to imagine and have a curiosity to invent things that no one has ever dreamed of before and curiosity to discover undiscovered things, entire areas of knowledge that are currently unknown, takes a much higher level of intelligence than just applying some mathematical equation to design a bridge. I think we do neglect this in the endless test taking and so on, which encourages following procedures and regurgitation of facts over imagination and innovation.
I reiterate my opposition to immigration and instead we ought to realize that we need to develop our own talent in the USA. It is, anti-american in fact, to suggest that Americans are inferior and that Americans cannot with a good education invent and create the things we need to be successful. Of course they can. It involves a change in our culture, we need to get away from Dancing with the Stars and American Idol and the Superbowl being the totality of our culture. We need to idolize scientists and engineers and inspire children to take those roles.
Most of the individuals mentioned have a very high 99 percentile intelligence and one out of a ten thousand skills and capability. I would bet most immigrants in the US today are run of the mill and totally and utterly unremarkable. If we want to have an immigration policy that brings in exclusively those with an IQ of over 140 and has won a nobel prize and widely regarded as being one of 100,000 in their scientific achievement, which would be a few dozen, maybe a few hundred per year, that is one thing, But most immigrants do not have skills or capabilities that exceed the average. Most immigrants are actually less intelligent and have lower IQs than Americans and only end up stealing jobs from us.
I support a limit to H3B visas of maybe 100 or so per year, of the highest IQ and the brightest. That would assure we are really gettting the cream of the crop. I would suggest give them IQ tests even.
I would say, I can say this surely, that Sergey Brinn, while intelligent,, is unremarkable, and Americans, can and have done the same things that he has done. Most are unremarkable and really do take jobs that Americans would be doing anyway. Many americans have developed software and search engines, including myself, so its sort of ridiculous to say that he has done things that Americans have not.
Part of the problem is that the current immigration law is abused, it is not really selective for IQ, or actual talent, most people permitted do not have extraordinary talents. As well, I do believe that Americans can invent and produce products and items that we need to remain competitive, the key to this is investing in college education and creating a system where innovative ideas and researchers can be well funded, where the venture capital and loaning is plentiful to home grown american innovators.
America needs to develop its own labor and talent pool, which is what a strong, self sufficient country does, we need to encourage our school children to have imagination and to be inventors, discovers with curiosity. We for instance, need to reduce the standardized testing obsession in schools and focus more on inspiration and science, rather than Garbage in, garbage out rote memorization and regurgitation of trivia. We need to stop letting in these immigrants which simply undercut our middle class, take jobs away from Americans and ruin our IT and professional labor markets with cheap foreign labor from people who spent 1/60th of what an american did on their third world education.
i should add that there should be some additional provisions. The student visa category could be dropped, or restricted, any student visa holder must pay full price for the education, they must be accepted by a college. They may not recieve any tax funded benefits. They may not recieve financing, for any purpose, from any American bank or institution. Colleges will be required to accept all American applicants before they are allowed to consider any foreign applicant. It would be at discretion of the college whether to accept any foreign applicants after they have approved all American applicants. There would be a lifetime 4 year time limit on the aliens student visa.
We should also create an Immigration and Border General who has authority to through regulation further restrict immigration beyond the restrictions in statute law and has the authority to pass any additional, more strict regulation than under statute law. This General would be directly elected by American voters, and would assure that US immigration laws are properly enforced and the borders are defended. This allows Americans to vote for this officer solely on the immigration issue.
Slashdot Mirror
It is irritating to hear of companies doing this because basically they do it just to disrupt someones routine. These services cost the company very little to operate as they were being run on a cloud where where they consume insubstaintial resources and only when the services are actually used. Its hard to believe they will save anything from this.
DEC always prided itself in marketing fully transistorized computers, so it was unlikely to have vacuum tubes.
X11 has never been difficult to use. The drivers have often been incomplete or unavailabne which made things hard to use for particular hardware, but this would have been a problem with no matter what window system, the driver situation would have been the same. Nearly all problems people have had are driver relelated and that has nothing to do with x11 itself but rather the lack of driver support for major hardware vendors. The driver issues have nothing to do with x11 itself so its improper to blame x11 for that.
And the reason Linux remains hostile to average users revolves around drivers. People want their hardware to just work and that means drivers are needed for hardware and Linux really should not be so hostile to hardware vendors that provide binary blob drivers.
What I have to say about touchscreen devices: these people are walking into stores saying "I'd like to trade in my desktop with its 20" screen, fullsize keyboard, mouse, surround sound, for a weak, puny device with a 4" screen and an on screen chiclet keyboard". That is sheer insanity. Touschscreens portables are a niche market, desktops are for people who do real work. Even a laptop is not equivalent to a desktop in ergonomics and comfort.
Many of these comments are really off from what I have seen having an in depth knowledge of X and Linux programming. It seems like many just say things without knowing what they are talking about. There are no useless libraries or interfaces in the X standard. You could use the core X graphics primatives to develop an application. Though, there are newer ones that do more. The old ones need to be there for backwards compatability, but the do not get in the way of addign new features. The 2D X graphics primitatives co-exist with DRI apps, and the 2D X graphics primatives can be ported to use the DRI backend by means of a DDX driver that uses DRI as its backend, which will help improve the interoperability of everything. Its the same with Linux itself, there are new APIs that have been added for new functionality but that older APIs can be easily supported without difficulty with good engineering. Adding extensions and new APIs while maintaining backwards compatability is essential to have a useable OS for real, actual users.
No need for X11R8. Just a protocol extension using the extension mechanism that was built in particularly for the purpose of extending X for these reasons.
At first I was concerned about Canonicals direction with its Window System. I think given some mitigation it will be manageable, only if a rootless Wayland server is available for Mir and a rootless Mir server available for Wayland to assure application cross compatability. . This will completely eliminate the possibility of a fractured platform. Otherwise, of course it will create problems.. Most distros will go Wayland and they should, they shouldnt allow Canonical to dictate the graphics stack to the rest of Linux
I found Ubuntu's Unity to simply be atrocious and I have a hard time believing that this is friendly for average users to use. Its just hard to find anything its the most frustrating thing. So, I would recommend after installing ubuntu, install KDE and try to use that and see if you like it better than Unity, or use Kubuntu.
I think Ubuntu would be better with rolling releases as well, with online updates these days it makes little sense to have the upgrades center around massive version upgrades but instead gradual updates over time. Versions would still be made but sort of could be a snapshot of the rolling release system at a certain time.
I am fine with a state/local sales tax but a federal sales tax is really a simply horrendous idea. We should actually shift more responsibilities to the states and therefore the states should collect more money. We should get the federal government out of things like education and health care. The states should be taking care of most issues such as health care and welfare needs, not the federal government. I do think that it would be okay for the federal government to charge a tax on interstate commerce designed to equalize the cost of importing something into a state and producing it in the state itself, since this would avoid states being penalized for the policies they implement by strategic business relocations. This would actually allow most of the things the federal government is now doing to be shifted to states. States should be allowed to find what solutions are best for the state, different states can optimize solutions according to their needs. Of course there would be no such tax on things produced and consumed within a state. There is no natural law that the federal government is a better place to do health care and education related things. In fact, its safer to do it at the safe level, if a bad policy is implemented at the federal level, it damages the entire country. If a state implements a bad policy it is limited to that state and easier to get away from. I do think people should be free to move to the state that they feel has the best policies.
How do you know where I am from? Don't jump to conclusions. I could be Japanese for all you know. But I know the stupid argument you are trying to make. And its wrong. There have been computer genetic studies of this. Northern Europeans form a genetic race that are very similar to each other. The fact is two white northern Europeans breeding will result in genuine white children with brown or blonde hair and blue eyes. Not so with a chinese or a black. You just cannot make an equivalence here.
Do you realize that people like you who do interracial breeding are contributing to the shrinkage or even destruction of our races. Do you know what this is called? Its called Genocide. Genocide does not need to be violent. All it needs to accomplish is the destruction of a race in whole or in part as a genetically distinct unit. I do not believe one race is better than another. I beleive in equal rights for everyone. But destroy our races through miscegenation? Goodness, no. I want to see all of humanities races preserved as unique, genetically distinct people, not destroy our races. Only hitler could love the idea of races being wiped out as genetically unique and distinct people. I think the time has come to restrict marriage to same race relationships to stop this genocidal destruction of humanities races.
Apparently you have never programmed with X11 , because that is one of the most stupid comments I have ever heard and bears no relation to reality.
The X protocol contains various graphics primatives, facilities for dealing with fonts, setting colors, color managment facilities, and so on. There are extensions for non-rectangular windows, for faster video, shared memory buffers, and other things that have become desired over the years. There is really nothing in X11 that an application could not use to render its user interface. Nothing really useless. It is concievable that an application could use all of the features the X server provides and use them well and many still do. So the feature are there because applications may need to use them and to make sure applications continue to be supported.
What has happened is that some x11 extensions have been offered that offer an alternative way to do things, such as with handling fonts. This added some capability, but the additional capability is not necessarily needed by all apps. Programs can still use the old way and things will be perfectly fine and functional.
The way you talk about things you make it sound like X is bloated. This is an old canard that goes back to the days when 1 MB was a lot of RAM. X is only bloated if your computer has 1 MB of RAM. X itself is lean, in fact, esp. in comparison to modern software like Firefox, taking only a few megabytes for the core protocol code. So basically, you want to remove what would amount some fraction of a megabyte of protocol code and break compatability with hundreds of applications. You sir are an idiot that no one ought to ever listen to.
You are right that for a long while, the API documentation sucked. They finally posted some, however. It looks good.
Wayland has been open compared to Canonicals process. They have had discussions on public mailing lists about it. There is a working code now as well. Yes it did take a while. I am not sure why, maybe they are perfectionists and were working out the details. They could have pushed out an early version and perfected things in later versions. But when you are dealing with an API, the API may need to be improved upon. When many applications have been targeted for an older version of the API, the you would need to have an extension mechanism and keep around support for the older API in a compatability layer glue code. So maybe they were trying to get the API right at the first go.
It would be a good idea. it would not require text only distributions to carry Wayland. If you have a Linux distro that is text only, then the GUI standards would not apply. If the distro does have a GUI, then wayland would be required by the standard.
Thats fine if its a word processor. The problem is that all applications rely on the Window System. You can choose your own word processor, and it affects little else. But, a bunch of incompatable window systems would be a disaster, it would actually take away your choices because now some software runs on window System A, but not window system B, so you end up not being able to use one block of software or another block of software. The good thing about X is that it has been used on all distributions, meaning you could run all Linux software on any Linux distribution, or on any other Unix OS, such as FreeBSD.
It is important to have standards. The same thing applies to web pages. If every person who made a web page decided to make their own incompatable HTML and use their browser to look at it, it means if you used another browser you could not get to their web page.
It is always a good idea to use a platform independant library to make porting between different platforms easier. Now that it is working on Wayland, one hopes that Ubuntus plans to fracture the Linux ecosystem can be averted. One thing that people need to remember about the situation situation with Canonicals arrogant plan to attempt a coup d'etat of the Linux graphics stack, is that unlike the window manager where choice is a good thing, having a lot of competing window systems is NOT a good thing. Lets imagine that Canonical announced that it would start using its own kernel, and that this Kernel would not support POSIX, but its own proprietary API. Now Linux applications would not be able to easily run on Ubuntu, and applications for Ubuntu would not be able to easily run on Linux. Having a bunch of incompatible window systems is as bad as that. The Window System is basically the kernel for GUI applications. Basically Canonicals Mir announcement is pretty much does the same, applications must talk to the Window system, so the Window system is as important as the kernel for application cross compatibility between OSs. Canonical is fracturing the Linux ecosystem and trying to greedily and arrogantly grab control of the Linux graphics stack and basically one of the most critical parts of the Linux ecosystem. Canonical's behaviour is outrageous and the Linux community should not tolerate this.
I think now is the time for other Linux Distros to commit to Wayland, leaving Canonical isolated.
We also need to start a petition to get Canonical to commit to wayland and stop trying to develop its own window system.
I also think that Wayland should be made a part of the Linux Standards Base. Perhaps the rights to use of the Linux trademark for companies such as Canonical who blatantly ignore Linux standards should be revoked.
Do people understand how absurdly unfeasible this is and how this article is basically spouting science fiction? If you tried to mine the moon, the material you mined would cost its weight in diaminds. Transport to the moon remains extremely cost-prohibitive and no concievable technology I have ever heard of can change that.
If we are talking about mining objects in space, anyway, it is worth pointing out its probably better to mine an asteroid which is more likely to be rich in the metals.
If there is no life there already, why no contaminate it with life, get something started there. As long as there is no life there already, it does not violate the prime directive (according to my copy of Starfleet manuals). I cant seem to see the harm in it.
The difference is that X has allowed all of the competion of toolkits, environments, etc, etc, while allowing the user to use the *nix of their choice, and being able to mix and match different gui parts. That is because X provides the standard common denominator that all of the applications support, so you could swap out the window manager and the applications wouldnt notice or care.
The beauty of X is that it did NOTHING at all in the area of putting graphics on the screen. it just provided a standard API for putting graphics on the screen. Since all apps supported the standard API, you could use whatever components you wanted together.
You could use KDE and Gnome apps together, and apps would run on any *nix OS without issues.
there is a danger of a situation now that, you may not be able to run some applications on a Linux distro because it has a different window system than the distro where the app was originally developed. There is an danger as well, that you may not be able to use a large number of applications on window system A, and not be able to use a a large number of apps on window system B, because some apps support A, and others support B, but will not run on both.
This is a terrible development. The splintering of the Linux desktop into a bunch of incompatable window systems is the last thing we need and which has been prevented for years by the X standard. While the Mir says it will support X applications, the threat comes from the fact that there may also be Mir applications which will not be able to run on other distributions, will not be able to run on X server root displays of other distributions. Another danger is not only Canonical trying to create a fleet of Mir only applications that cannot run on X server, but as well, end up creating a driver mess with drivers that can only run on Mir, or where driver vendors will now be faced with supporting many incompatable driver APIs for all of these windown systems, which will deter hardware vendors from supporting the platform.
The presents of so many incompatable window systems will simply make Linux appear to be a splintered, fractured platform that will appear impossible for hardware vendors to support.
Another problem with this Mir idea is that it takes away the ability of Linux users to continue to use their fine tuned, customized X desktops which so many have invested time in tailoring to their liking, and with their own choice of window manager.
I also find the name to be odd. Do they name it after a soviet space station as an indication that they are planning to take away our rights in a soviet style dictatorship? Canonical has been acting like a soviet style dictatorship that has forced its own obscene agendas on its users for years, including the Unity atrocity which is utterly antagonistic towards users. The Unity environment was designed to force on users some convuluted model of how things should work, as if Canonical has felt it needs to take away users freedom and force on users things that will cause them great pain and discomfort because the pain is good for them, as a price to pay for Canonicals fetish for bizarre and unueable user interfaces. It is sort of like how an interior decorator designs extremely uncomfortable furniture that inflicts misery on the users of that furniture, because to the interior decorator, such misery is a beautiful thing, they think that deprivations and discomfort have an aesthetic value to them.
Sadly, your example shows the level of intellectual functioning of many people these days. Mindless consumers of content who rarely are able to produce any significant coherent writing whatsoever, because thats all these tablets and such are good for .
For actual content creators with an IQ over 120, the desktop is not going anywhere. Its the best, most comfortable way to produce content, with a full size, free standing keyboard and a larger screen. A must for going to college and for work. I cannot imagine doing college work on a laptop, I know people do. But it is allows little flexibility for positioning of the screen and keyboard relative to each other. They also provide a much worse value as far as CPU and hard drive capacity per dollar.
Touch screen is ridiculous for work. The reason we use keyboards and mouse is so that the arm can rest on the desk. Using a touch screen at a desk continuously becomes uncomfortably very quickly.
I suggest the H1B program be abolished. This would force employers to actually hire and train american workers and would force them to be more flexible. Oh, and also lets do some tariffs to stop them from moving jobs overseas. Problem solved. As long as Employers can use H1B as a crutch they will pass up perfectly intelligent American workers.
The costs of the H!B program to our country are enormous. Not only is it damaging the identity and culture ogf the country by creating mini Indias and damaging the Western European identity of the country, but, also we do actually pay for this in ballooning welfare rolls. forcing companies to hire americans will actually save us money and bring down the federal debt by cutting down the welfare rolls. The tariffs will help us reduce our welfare rolls as well.
Another important thing I Have long suggested is that we provide a series of low cost education options for American workers including an expidited retraining program to fill IT jobs and government student loans for all Americans with improved forbearance and deferment mechanisms during unemployment.
Furthermore we should give much larger tax cuts to middle class families who have large numbers of children in order to solve our fertility crisis and increase the birth rate to above replacement level. People are basically not having enough kids and need to have far more than they are now.
The USA has a crisis of Americans having too few children, below what is needed to maintain replacement level fertility. it should be a focus of policy to get middle class fertility to above 2.3 to reverse and correct this serious problem which threatens the existance of pan-European civilisation.
Exactly, spot on. As I said, nearly all of these h1b applicants are unremarkable. Americans are every bit as capable and even more intelligent than these immigrants, and can easily be trained to do whatever these immigrants do Instead we are neglecting Americans, we are literally not spending on training Americans to do the work and lieu of that we bring in foreign labor which is not one bit more intelligent than Americans because corporations and our country does not want to provide opportunities and training for our own people. Many companies like to undercut american workers by hiring cheap third world labor that undercuts the American middle class. Many companies hire Indians are who are less intelligent than Americans, spent 1/60th of what an American did on their third world education, are not as well educated as Americans, and lie about their credentials, even coming up with fake Indian degrees.
They will, I repeat, will steal jobs from Americans and are very likely less intelligent than Americans. There is nothing that they can do that an American cannot, I gaurantee it. I do get very tired of people bringing up Einstein because 99.9%, if not all, of these people are not Einstien, and actually have IQs lower than most americans.
Why not give them an IQ test and require them to score above a 150 on the IQ test to get their visa? Because, the fact is, these immigrants are no more intelligent than americans but are willing to work for poverty third world wages. Period, end of story, full stop.
I do think America should focus on growing home grown talent and we should abolish the H1B program. Why not require H1B applications to pass an IQ test with a score over 150. Really, if they are Einstiens, they should not be afraid of that.
Why not give every immigrant and IQ test and require them to pass with a 150?
One of the posters above mentioned Stroustrup and Sergey Brinn. There is no doubt they are intelligent, but there are huge numbers of Americans that are just as intelligent, including myself. In fact, Americans have developed programming languages and have developed search engines, including myself. There is absolutely nothing remarkable about those two, I have done myself everything that they have accomplished.
I am absolutely certain we can train Americans to do every job that needs to be done and through homegrown talent we can absolutely maintain our edge.
I would add we should also have a society that idolizes scientists, engineers, doctors. Instead we have a society that idolizes airheads, pop star and entertainment icons, people like Beyonce, Britney Spears. One good thing that PBS actually does for us is that we do have a science program that probably does inspire more children to become scientists rather than to want to become basketball players or pop icons.
Having an imagination is an important part of intelligence. Being able to imagine and have a curiosity to invent things that no one has ever dreamed of before and curiosity to discover undiscovered things, entire areas of knowledge that are currently unknown, takes a much higher level of intelligence than just applying some mathematical equation to design a bridge. I think we do neglect this in the endless test taking and so on, which encourages following procedures and regurgitation of facts over imagination and innovation.
I reiterate my opposition to immigration and instead we ought to realize that we need to develop our own talent in the USA. It is, anti-american in fact, to suggest that Americans are inferior and that Americans cannot with a good education invent and create the things we need to be successful. Of course they can. It involves a change in our culture, we need to get away from Dancing with the Stars and American Idol and the Superbowl being the totality of our culture. We need to idolize scientists and engineers and inspire children to take those roles.
Most of the individuals mentioned have a very high 99 percentile intelligence and one out of a ten thousand skills and capability. I would bet most immigrants in the US today are run of the mill and totally and utterly unremarkable. If we want to have an immigration policy that brings in exclusively those with an IQ of over 140 and has won a nobel prize and widely regarded as being one of 100,000 in their scientific achievement, which would be a few dozen, maybe a few hundred per year, that is one thing, But most immigrants do not have skills or capabilities that exceed the average. Most immigrants are actually less intelligent and have lower IQs than Americans and only end up stealing jobs from us.
I support a limit to H3B visas of maybe 100 or so per year, of the highest IQ and the brightest. That would assure we are really gettting the cream of the crop. I would suggest give them IQ tests even.
I would say, I can say this surely, that Sergey Brinn, while intelligent,, is unremarkable, and Americans, can and have done the same things that he has done. Most are unremarkable and really do take jobs that Americans would be doing anyway. Many americans have developed software and search engines, including myself, so its sort of ridiculous to say that he has done things that Americans have not.
Part of the problem is that the current immigration law is abused, it is not really selective for IQ, or actual talent, most people permitted do not have extraordinary talents. As well, I do believe that Americans can invent and produce products and items that we need to remain competitive, the key to this is investing in college education and creating a system where innovative ideas and researchers can be well funded, where the venture capital and loaning is plentiful to home grown american innovators.
America needs to develop its own labor and talent pool, which is what a strong, self sufficient country does, we need to encourage our school children to have imagination and to be inventors, discovers with curiosity. We for instance, need to reduce the standardized testing obsession in schools and focus more on inspiration and science, rather than Garbage in, garbage out rote memorization and regurgitation of trivia. We need to stop letting in these immigrants which simply undercut our middle class, take jobs away from Americans and ruin our IT and professional labor markets with cheap foreign labor from people who spent 1/60th of what an american did on their third world education.
i should add that there should be some additional provisions. The student visa category could be dropped, or restricted, any student visa holder must pay full price for the education, they must be accepted by a college. They may not recieve any tax funded benefits. They may not recieve financing, for any purpose, from any American bank or institution. Colleges will be required to accept all American applicants before they are allowed to consider any foreign applicant. It would be at discretion of the college whether to accept any foreign applicants after they have approved all American applicants. There would be a lifetime 4 year time limit on the aliens student visa.
We should also create an Immigration and Border General who has authority to through regulation further restrict immigration beyond the restrictions in statute law and has the authority to pass any additional, more strict regulation than under statute law. This General would be directly elected by American voters, and would assure that US immigration laws are properly enforced and the borders are defended. This allows Americans to vote for this officer solely on the immigration issue.