That's far different than Gnome taking tax-deductible donations and then creating a GUI that is sold by Sun/RedHat/etc.
You can go to any number of websites, download the Gnome source, and build your own. The fact that someone else provides the service of doing the download and build for you (e.g. RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, et. al.) doesn't make it "their" product.
You really like to focus on that misconception that the donations support the programmers who contribute. In fact you are so completely enamoured of that misconception that I'm going to just "walk away" at this point -- I have a feeling I'd have an easier time converting a Southern Baptist preacher to Hinduism than convincing you to let go of that fantasy.
I've been called worse than maniac -- no one has ever accused me of being sane. *g*
Read the original story -- the donations are to support the conference, not the developers. The developers do the work for free or are sponsored the companies they work for. Whatever gave you the idea that the Gnome (or any open source) developers don't have "real jobs"?
Funny -- I felt every bit as offended at your "self-indulgent" comment. I take pride in my code, make a good living with it, and hardly feel "indulgent" when I contribute to the community through code or testing.
So would you rather die from pancreatic cancer in horrible agony, or would you rather that a charitable organization provided you with morphine to ease your pain?
Having watched my grandfather suffer from pancreatic cancer for almost a year (though the doctors originally gave him 3 months at the outside), I'd be far more inclined to self-terminate than expect society to pay for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of treatment and pain killers so I could selfishly cling to life for a couple more agonized months.
Please, tell me what improvements are needed to Gnome before it is good enough to serve the needs of a third-world government.
How about you tell me what features are being worked on that they don't need? Gnome is solid and relatively stable, but it is not "complete." It needs better documentation, better integration (e.g. file extension/application binding defaults), and most of the sub-projects are still far from completely functional.
What would be the point of "developing" text-based software for 386-based PCs? The machines being donated by corps to the third world are typically Pentium or PII systems they'd been using until a year or two ago. Those shipped by my current client site were PII350s with 256MB RAM, 10G HDDs, 1280x1024 capable displays, with 10baseT ethernet, SB16 compatible sound support, mouse, keyboard, and monitor. The cheap PCs sold in India for those with a limited budget are even more powerful than that.
Asking anyone in the third world to try to educate themselves using 386 based machines as you describe would be futile -- the skills required would be hopelessly outdated before they even turned the machine on. They don't need to learn how to type -- they need to be able to replace modern commercial products that leech their budgets.
You and I both know that organizations like Gnome were not what legislators had in mind when they drafted 501(c)(3).
Bullshit. It was intended to support non-profit organizations, and it's doing that. The fact that you don't agree with the goals of at least one of those organizations does not make the law or it's intent any less valid.
I kind of wish Sun weren't planning to use Gnome, as it would make it clearer to you that this whole business has nothing to do with supporting corporations.
Say I take a few million dollars (assuming I had it), and set up a park with some investments to fund maintenance of the park. No one is charged admission, and everyone is free to roam around whether they be stock broker or homeless bum. If some corporation chooses to have their annual picnic in that same park, is it now "supporting" business?
Of course not! It is still open to all, used by all, and is still not costing anyone admission.
The fact that some corp like Sun has chosen to use the "park" provided by Gnome does not make it a corporate pawn -- it just means another member of the community is accepting the offer to use the facilities.
While you may view free software projects as a "hobby", many of those who work on the projects believe in the good of what they are doing every bit as much as you do when you contribute to the charity of your choice. While there is a significant degree of ego and pride involved in contributing quality code, it is no more "self-indulgent" than your feeling of having "done good" when you write that donation check.
Your comment about "suffer and die" is inflammatory. The poster made the valid observation that many charities don't have a long-term benefit -- they just tide people over so they can suffer a little longer.
Education and skills are more valuable in the long run than a soup-kitchen approach to helping people. Teach them to support themselves and they don't need your help anymore.
Helping third-world nations avoid spending their meager finances on corporations software is a good thing for the world society.
What do tax deductions to charitable organizations have to do with profitable corporations? What corporations benefit from supporting a Gnome conference? Is Sun getting a free display at the conference? HP? IBM? Who?
No one. Your reference to AMD and Intel is nothing but a red herring intended to inflame anyone with an anti-corporate axe to grind.
It's easy to be self-righteous when you're self-deluded into thinking your way is the only way. Fortunately for the rest of society, other viewpoints are not only allowed, but encouraged and even supported by the openness of the tax laws.
Somewhere you seem to have gotten the idea that "charity" means "socially responsible." Charity is just giving to help when you aren't required to and don't expect a direct benefit back. Your "morales" are irrelevant.
BTW, if you were offended by the "name calling", reread your own post -- I just parodied your own statement from the flip side.
When I think of all the hundreds of thousands of people who benefit the hard work donated by open-source developers, the idea of a self-righteous liberal prig complaining about leveraging the tax code as it was intended is revolting.
The idea that there are people out there who think only their pet projects deserve assistance is not my idea of a real uplifting message right before Christmas. (And if you object to my calling it Christmas, go to work that day and take your religious holiday off instead.)
No users. None. Nada. Zip. Not one filthy human peanut-butter smudged hand to touch the damned thing after it was turned on. Friends with families have equipment fail within a year or two, while my identical equipment runs for years after.
Vacuum environment. See prior point. No dust to eventually cause heating problems by clogging fans or fins, just nice cozy isolation to radiate heat into.
Simplicity. Pioneer 10 was less complex than a modern pocket organizer, and less powerful.
Industrial design. Home buyers don't want something as rugged as Pioneer 10 -- they want something shiny with lots of blinking lights and switches. (Also related to (1).)
No "Made in China/Korea/Vietnam/..." parts. If there were, they'd have been individually tested (as were the components actually used), rather than testing n/1000 and using the results to decide if the lot is "good enough" to ship.
Pride. People working on NASA projects had pride, something sorely lacking in modern manufacturing. Profit margin has replaced pride in product quality. Can you imagine a space probe designed and built by HPaq? or by a whitebox "manufacturer"?
A $150 DVD player is near bottom of the line, so when it breaks you should not be surprised. I wouldn't be surprised if at least one of those was also a multi-disk unit with even more points of failure.
You're right about turntables, and it also applies to (seperate component) cassette decks from most manufacturers. They have solid designs that work, have all the features needed, and haven't been changed with in several years, except the faceplate labels and sometimes the button layout or display color.
Other stuff like CD or DVD players are constantly having their designs tweaked each model year, and it seems that each time you're really taking a gamble as to whether it's really any better than last year's model (quality wise), or just retooled for cheaper manufacturing.
All in all I'd say predictability of quality has disappeared. It used to be that you bought certain brands for the quality, now you have no idea from model to model whether it's going to perform very well or for very long.
Buy a top-end Sony monitor (G520), XBR TV, DVD player, etc. from their ES line, and you get decent quality and reliability. Why? Because those units require and receive a bit of testing and tweaking before shipping.
Buy their "consumer" level products, and you get untested slide-line manufactured junk, the same as everyone else in the cheap-as-possible-with-lots-of-buttons market.
I and my sisters gave the folks a 20" Sony TV for their anniversary over ten years ago, and it works fine. My 32" Trinitron (8 years old) still works fine. My first DVD player was a Sony, which lasted through almost six years of heavy use, and AFAIK is still working for the guy who bought it from me (I replaced it with a new Sony in the same price range that does SACD and progressive scan, which is working fine, but only six months old.) My ES20 CD player is still solid after six years, but no longer gets used because the DACs aren't upgradeable. An ancient Sony 17se still functions, though it can no longer do more than 72Hz without generating a squeal (it used to do 75-85.)
On the flip side, I've had to replace my portable Sony CD player about once a year. Failed motors. Failed CD clamps. Failed audio jack. Failed buttons/wiring. Yet the only moving these units have done is from desk drawer to desk top and back each day at work.
I never have and never would buy one of Sony's amps, because they have no current. Watts don't drive good sound, clean current does. A 75 watt high current amplifier from the audiophile manufacturers runs rings around a "250 watt" Sony.
The bigger problem I've had is companies like JVC, Viewsonic, and HP, who don't have the high build quality lines. They use the same parts throughout their manufacturing line, and it shows. I killed two HP DVD burners with less than 1500 hours of burning each. My JVC VCR has been flaky since day one, despite being their "top of the line" model. A 19" Viewsonic monitor died in less than two years, despite being their "professional" series.
Plug in the power and ethernet. Turn on the power switch.
Configure your IP address or DHCP name into the NCD.
Possibly restart the NCD.
Right-mouse should bring up a local window manager menu, which should include telnet windows. Telnet to your target host, set the DISPLAY variable to "my.ip.add.ress:0.0", and launch an X application (e.g. xterm &).
That should let you use the built-in X11R4/R5 functionality.
Once that works, then you can futz with setting remote desktop manager sessions (which I've never had to set up nor have much use for. *g*)
BTW, what is the other poster talking about "X11"
vs. "XFree86"? There are X11R3/4/5/6 protocol levels, but any compliant display for a given protocol level should function just fine for applications that don't need higher level compliance. XFree86 is just an implementation of X11R6 protocols, not something other than X11.
The biggest problem CMVC encounters is that developers are usually looking for a software versioning repository like RCS or SCCS. CMVC tackles not only software versioning, but defect/request tracking, and correlation of code deltas to defects.
If developers don't accept the benefits of that tracking, they'll never consider it to be anything but an irritant. If project management doesn't actually use the additional information to control the project development, then CMVC is a poor fit if the project just wants a source code repository.
I haven't set up a CVS server yet, but I keep my own code in an RCS repository. Everything I've read indicates that CVS is a means of publishing a read-only image of an RCS-managed project, and of accepting suggested code changes for review. CVS does not track defects/requests AFAIK, so if developers are used to working with CVS and RCS, they'll likely find CMVC frustrating as it requires them to coordinate an extra piece of information (the defect/request ids they are working on.)
There was no point comparing a card targetted at the sub-100 market against boards in the $400-500 market.
Budget cards sell to budget markets, which means a 17" monitor that will do 1280x1024x75Hz with some degree of acceptability. Testing performance at 1600x1200 was pointless for this market.
This chipset is designed for a market where the whole system (less monitor) is selling for prices comparable to top of the line NVidia and ATI cards. It's not intended to compete with those cards, but to provide a tolerable experience on a cheap system.
I got burnt by this too. Shut down MPlayer. Remove the.mplayer subdirectory (rm -Rf $HOME/.mplayer). Restart MPlayer, and it recreates the.mplayer settings with default values.
My home directory is mounted on an
NFS file system in which file locking does not work
As Gnome coordinates the updating of various config and application files in the user's home directory, it needs a working file lock manager to prevent overwrites. This isn't a bug in gnome, but a crippled NFS server implementation.
Sun has working file lock managers, so do Linux, BSD, and Netware. Why this user's NFS server doesn't support file locking is beyond me...
You'll notice that when you start KDE apps under Gnome, various KDE daemons are started if they aren't running. If you run Gnome apps from KDE, various Gnome daemons get started. I expect tooltalkd or some such will be started to deal with the CDE applications in the same way.
Did anyone ever actually use tooltalk with CDE? I never saw anything except recompiled Motif applications...
Ooh, the button locations in Gnome must be wrong because other apps do it differently. Sorry, but if you blindly click without reading the labels you deserve whatever happens.
I'm not aware of Gnome polluting XFree86. XF86 still seems to work fine with everything, so I don't see where "pollution" comes in. Then again, I haven't looked into it because there are more important issues in my life than whether or not the Gnome team made suggestions that would improve performance of the GUI in any way.
RedHat, Ximian, and Sun direct Gnome? What a shock! Companies with some cash to hire staff are funding an open-source project and expect to have their feature requests addressed first. I'm stunned. Just beyond words at the audacity of these groups for daring to spend money supporting open source!
GConf is not the window's registry. I followed the references someone made to the.gconf directory, and found it is a hierarchy of XML files. Just what I'd have wanted to see. The issue with WinXX registry is that it can't be easily modified or backed up -- GConf is straight XML text files that I can easily save, restore, and mangle to my heart's content.
If the people working on Gnome are a bunch of "fucking retards", how did they manage to produce any software? Maybe it's your attitude that is the problem?
As to "the point" of configurability, maybe you should rewrite your posting again. It seemed to be a long-winded diatribe with a bunch of links to posts about pet-peeve configuration issues. If you were trying to raise some legitimate issue other than configuration, please explain -- it's not clear from your post.
Actually this "Joe User" has been doing software development for over 20 years, with about 10 years of that being GUI/C++/RDBMS/3-tier applications.
I don't know what "philosophy" you thought Gnome was about, but my understanding was they were to create a functional, easy to use, easy to program desktop manager. Looks to me like they succeeded -- very well.
It also seems to me that you have a lot of pet peeves with the way Gnome went/is going, and I haven't seen any postings here supporting that viewpoint. Many of your links refer specifically to problems with Gnome 2 under RedHat. If you tried it under other distros, I think you'd realize it's RedHat and their Blue Curve nonsense that is the root cause of most of your issues, not Gnome 2 itself.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you read what you posted? The key relevant items expressly listed as qualifying include:
You can go to any number of websites, download the Gnome source, and build your own. The fact that someone else provides the service of doing the download and build for you (e.g. RedHat, SuSE, Mandrake, et. al.) doesn't make it "their" product.
You really like to focus on that misconception that the donations support the programmers who contribute. In fact you are so completely enamoured of that misconception that I'm going to just "walk away" at this point -- I have a feeling I'd have an easier time converting a Southern Baptist preacher to Hinduism than convincing you to let go of that fantasy.
Funny -- I felt every bit as offended at your "self-indulgent" comment. I take pride in my code, make a good living with it, and hardly feel "indulgent" when I contribute to the community through code or testing.
Having watched my grandfather suffer from pancreatic cancer for almost a year (though the doctors originally gave him 3 months at the outside), I'd be far more inclined to self-terminate than expect society to pay for hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of treatment and pain killers so I could selfishly cling to life for a couple more agonized months.
How about you tell me what features are being worked on that they don't need? Gnome is solid and relatively stable, but it is not "complete." It needs better documentation, better integration (e.g. file extension/application binding defaults), and most of the sub-projects are still far from completely functional.
What would be the point of "developing" text-based software for 386-based PCs? The machines being donated by corps to the third world are typically Pentium or PII systems they'd been using until a year or two ago. Those shipped by my current client site were PII350s with 256MB RAM, 10G HDDs, 1280x1024 capable displays, with 10baseT ethernet, SB16 compatible sound support, mouse, keyboard, and monitor. The cheap PCs sold in India for those with a limited budget are even more powerful than that.
Asking anyone in the third world to try to educate themselves using 386 based machines as you describe would be futile -- the skills required would be hopelessly outdated before they even turned the machine on. They don't need to learn how to type -- they need to be able to replace modern commercial products that leech their budgets.
Bullshit. It was intended to support non-profit organizations, and it's doing that. The fact that you don't agree with the goals of at least one of those organizations does not make the law or it's intent any less valid.
I kind of wish Sun weren't planning to use Gnome, as it would make it clearer to you that this whole business has nothing to do with supporting corporations.
Say I take a few million dollars (assuming I had it), and set up a park with some investments to fund maintenance of the park. No one is charged admission, and everyone is free to roam around whether they be stock broker or homeless bum. If some corporation chooses to have their annual picnic in that same park, is it now "supporting" business?
Of course not! It is still open to all, used by all, and is still not costing anyone admission.
The fact that some corp like Sun has chosen to use the "park" provided by Gnome does not make it a corporate pawn -- it just means another member of the community is accepting the offer to use the facilities.
While you may view free software projects as a "hobby", many of those who work on the projects believe in the good of what they are doing every bit as much as you do when you contribute to the charity of your choice. While there is a significant degree of ego and pride involved in contributing quality code, it is no more "self-indulgent" than your feeling of having "done good" when you write that donation check.
Your comment about "suffer and die" is inflammatory. The poster made the valid observation that many charities don't have a long-term benefit -- they just tide people over so they can suffer a little longer.
Education and skills are more valuable in the long run than a soup-kitchen approach to helping people. Teach them to support themselves and they don't need your help anymore.
Helping third-world nations avoid spending their meager finances on corporations software is a good thing for the world society.
I have to admit, you are a master at inflammatory red-herring arguments that don't answer people's comments.
What do tax deductions to charitable organizations have to do with profitable corporations? What corporations benefit from supporting a Gnome conference? Is Sun getting a free display at the conference? HP? IBM? Who?
No one. Your reference to AMD and Intel is nothing but a red herring intended to inflame anyone with an anti-corporate axe to grind.
It's easy to be self-righteous when you're self-deluded into thinking your way is the only way. Fortunately for the rest of society, other viewpoints are not only allowed, but encouraged and even supported by the openness of the tax laws.
Somewhere you seem to have gotten the idea that "charity" means "socially responsible." Charity is just giving to help when you aren't required to and don't expect a direct benefit back. Your "morales" are irrelevant.
BTW, if you were offended by the "name calling", reread your own post -- I just parodied your own statement from the flip side.
When I think of all the hundreds of thousands of people who benefit the hard work donated by open-source developers, the idea of a self-righteous liberal prig complaining about leveraging the tax code as it was intended is revolting.
The idea that there are people out there who think only their pet projects deserve assistance is not my idea of a real uplifting message right before Christmas. (And if you object to my calling it Christmas, go to work that day and take your religious holiday off instead.)
A $150 DVD player is near bottom of the line, so when it breaks you should not be surprised. I wouldn't be surprised if at least one of those was also a multi-disk unit with even more points of failure.
You're right about turntables, and it also applies to (seperate component) cassette decks from most manufacturers. They have solid designs that work, have all the features needed, and haven't been changed with in several years, except the faceplate labels and sometimes the button layout or display color.
Other stuff like CD or DVD players are constantly having their designs tweaked each model year, and it seems that each time you're really taking a gamble as to whether it's really any better than last year's model (quality wise), or just retooled for cheaper manufacturing.
All in all I'd say predictability of quality has disappeared. It used to be that you bought certain brands for the quality, now you have no idea from model to model whether it's going to perform very well or for very long.
Buy a top-end Sony monitor (G520), XBR TV, DVD player, etc. from their ES line, and you get decent quality and reliability. Why? Because those units require and receive a bit of testing and tweaking before shipping.
Buy their "consumer" level products, and you get untested slide-line manufactured junk, the same as everyone else in the cheap-as-possible-with-lots-of-buttons market.
I and my sisters gave the folks a 20" Sony TV for their anniversary over ten years ago, and it works fine. My 32" Trinitron (8 years old) still works fine. My first DVD player was a Sony, which lasted through almost six years of heavy use, and AFAIK is still working for the guy who bought it from me (I replaced it with a new Sony in the same price range that does SACD and progressive scan, which is working fine, but only six months old.) My ES20 CD player is still solid after six years, but no longer gets used because the DACs aren't upgradeable. An ancient Sony 17se still functions, though it can no longer do more than 72Hz without generating a squeal (it used to do 75-85.)
On the flip side, I've had to replace my portable Sony CD player about once a year. Failed motors. Failed CD clamps. Failed audio jack. Failed buttons/wiring. Yet the only moving these units have done is from desk drawer to desk top and back each day at work.
I never have and never would buy one of Sony's amps, because they have no current. Watts don't drive good sound, clean current does. A 75 watt high current amplifier from the audiophile manufacturers runs rings around a "250 watt" Sony.
The bigger problem I've had is companies like JVC, Viewsonic, and HP, who don't have the high build quality lines. They use the same parts throughout their manufacturing line, and it shows. I killed two HP DVD burners with less than 1500 hours of burning each. My JVC VCR has been flaky since day one, despite being their "top of the line" model. A 19" Viewsonic monitor died in less than two years, despite being their "professional" series.
Plug in the power and ethernet. Turn on the power switch.
Configure your IP address or DHCP name into the NCD.
Possibly restart the NCD.
Right-mouse should bring up a local window manager menu, which should include telnet windows. Telnet to your target host, set the DISPLAY variable to "my.ip.add.ress:0.0", and launch an X application (e.g. xterm &).
That should let you use the built-in X11R4/R5 functionality.
Once that works, then you can futz with setting remote desktop manager sessions (which I've never had to set up nor have much use for. *g*)
BTW, what is the other poster talking about "X11" vs. "XFree86"? There are X11R3/4/5/6 protocol levels, but any compliant display for a given protocol level should function just fine for applications that don't need higher level compliance. XFree86 is just an implementation of X11R6 protocols, not something other than X11.
The biggest problem CMVC encounters is that developers are usually looking for a software versioning repository like RCS or SCCS. CMVC tackles not only software versioning, but defect/request tracking, and correlation of code deltas to defects.
If developers don't accept the benefits of that tracking, they'll never consider it to be anything but an irritant. If project management doesn't actually use the additional information to control the project development, then CMVC is a poor fit if the project just wants a source code repository.
I haven't set up a CVS server yet, but I keep my own code in an RCS repository. Everything I've read indicates that CVS is a means of publishing a read-only image of an RCS-managed project, and of accepting suggested code changes for review. CVS does not track defects/requests AFAIK, so if developers are used to working with CVS and RCS, they'll likely find CMVC frustrating as it requires them to coordinate an extra piece of information (the defect/request ids they are working on.)
The boards being compared are in the roughly $100 market. Unless the Trident chipset hits the sub $50 integrator market, they're DOA.
There was no point comparing a card targetted at the sub-100 market against boards in the $400-500 market.
Budget cards sell to budget markets, which means a 17" monitor that will do 1280x1024x75Hz with some degree of acceptability. Testing performance at 1600x1200 was pointless for this market.
This chipset is designed for a market where the whole system (less monitor) is selling for prices comparable to top of the line NVidia and ATI cards. It's not intended to compete with those cards, but to provide a tolerable experience on a cheap system.
I got burnt by this too. Shut down MPlayer. Remove the .mplayer subdirectory (rm -Rf $HOME/.mplayer). Restart MPlayer, and it recreates the .mplayer settings with default values.
From the referenced bug report:
As Gnome coordinates the updating of various config and application files in the user's home directory, it needs a working file lock manager to prevent overwrites. This isn't a bug in gnome, but a crippled NFS server implementation.
Sun has working file lock managers, so do Linux, BSD, and Netware. Why this user's NFS server doesn't support file locking is beyond me...
I thought NeWS was the DisplayPostscript equivalent to an X-11 server. *shrug* Maybe my memory is fuzzy...
You'll notice that when you start KDE apps under Gnome, various KDE daemons are started if they aren't running. If you run Gnome apps from KDE, various Gnome daemons get started. I expect tooltalkd or some such will be started to deal with the CDE applications in the same way.
Did anyone ever actually use tooltalk with CDE? I never saw anything except recompiled Motif applications...
There was no debate. You ranted, I tried to make sense of it, you gave up.
Just as well -- I need some sleep. *g*
Ooh, the button locations in Gnome must be wrong because other apps do it differently. Sorry, but if you blindly click without reading the labels you deserve whatever happens.
I'm not aware of Gnome polluting XFree86. XF86 still seems to work fine with everything, so I don't see where "pollution" comes in. Then again, I haven't looked into it because there are more important issues in my life than whether or not the Gnome team made suggestions that would improve performance of the GUI in any way.
RedHat, Ximian, and Sun direct Gnome? What a shock! Companies with some cash to hire staff are funding an open-source project and expect to have their feature requests addressed first. I'm stunned. Just beyond words at the audacity of these groups for daring to spend money supporting open source!
GConf is not the window's registry. I followed the references someone made to the .gconf directory, and found it is a hierarchy of XML files. Just what I'd have wanted to see. The issue with WinXX registry is that it can't be easily modified or backed up -- GConf is straight XML text files that I can easily save, restore, and mangle to my heart's content.
If the people working on Gnome are a bunch of "fucking retards", how did they manage to produce any software? Maybe it's your attitude that is the problem?
As to "the point" of configurability, maybe you should rewrite your posting again. It seemed to be a long-winded diatribe with a bunch of links to posts about pet-peeve configuration issues. If you were trying to raise some legitimate issue other than configuration, please explain -- it's not clear from your post.
Actually this "Joe User" has been doing software development for over 20 years, with about 10 years of that being GUI/C++/RDBMS/3-tier applications.
I don't know what "philosophy" you thought Gnome was about, but my understanding was they were to create a functional, easy to use, easy to program desktop manager. Looks to me like they succeeded -- very well.
It also seems to me that you have a lot of pet peeves with the way Gnome went/is going, and I haven't seen any postings here supporting that viewpoint. Many of your links refer specifically to problems with Gnome 2 under RedHat. If you tried it under other distros, I think you'd realize it's RedHat and their Blue Curve nonsense that is the root cause of most of your issues, not Gnome 2 itself.