Sounds like your users have problems with Unix, not "open source" per se. I'm not sure how to familiarize people with Unixisms. There was no manual that said "here is how to compile and install stuff" (well, besides the INSTALL file!!). I learned by doing.
Java will have genericity (i.e. templates) in 1.5, and by all accounts it will be implemented much better than C++ templates (too bad it has taken so long though).
Aha! Here is a solid example where built-in transparency trumps "remote viewing". When the remote machine cannot afford to host the graphics of an application at all (no video card, low memory, whatever) and MUST send them directly to the client. Thanks.
Thanks for the response. I agree built-in network transparency is technically elegant. I just hope the functionality that is being merged in to support more "mainstream" desktop uses can be integrated without the network transparency architecture causing too much trouble (for one, anything displaying real-time non-vector graphics, e.g. games, I would think would be completely incompatible with network transparency). I will leave it up to the X developers to sort it out, and perhaps a fork is justified if the X team cannot move fast enough on these issues. It's always the last 10%...
"In what circumstances would you WANT disparate remote applications, from potentially multiple remote machines, integrating invisibly in your current desktop ?"
Any time you have multiple Unix machines on a network.
Seriously, if you'd spent a few years working in a Unix shop where you're often compiling and running from a different machine to the one you're displaying on, which may well be running a different OS on different hardware, you'd understand why this is A Good Thing(tm)... and the more that Unix adopts GUI-based tools like Windows, the more useful it is. Why, for example, would you want to actually go to the remote machine (which might even be at a site on the other side of the world) to run the GUI-based admin tool if you can run it remotely to your workstation?
I understand the premise of network transparency. I use Windows as a client most of the time and with the help of the Cygwin X Server (great job by the way Cygwin guys, I love rootless), I often run remote apps. So I understand why you would want to run remote apps. However, I *also* use VNC, for instance to manipulate a remote OS X Mac.
My question is what (if any) circumstances are there where some sort of "standalone" remote-viewing implementation would NOT be sufficient for the what X's built-in network transparency is used for. For instance, a standalone remote-viewing implementation could always grab remote bitmaps of apps and show them on your client (perhaps using the X protocol or something like it, like VNC, etc.). *Functionally* I cannot think of a difference for my uses. The superficial difference would be that perhaps visually the windows would not integrate that well with the rest of the desktop. The question I am asking is whether this is a reasonable price to pay for built-in network transparency which has made the (increasingly) common usage of X (standalone client with high level of visual features) more difficult.
This is not to mention the fact that since nobody can (or will) decide on window managers or toolkits, apps currently look different and are non-integrated ANYWAY, regardless of whether you integrate the network transparency at the X level.
Also, what does it say that KDE has rebuilt standalone remote-viewing functionality in the face of built-in X network transparency?
On network transparency...
on
XFree86 Politics
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Ok, I've participated in many X "discussions" and the one feature of X that is always trumpeted is the out of the box network transparency.
As the Windows and Mac OS GUIs increase in sophistication, we have seen that they have been able to add in "network transparency" to an extent (ok more like "remote viewing") with things like VNC, and other implementations, that exist entirely seperate from the GUI proper - they basically implement a very very basic bitmap-copying protocol.
Is there a case where THIS IS NOT SUFFICIENT? Is it really that much of a win to burden the entire architecture with a feature that in its common use can be implemented completely seperately and still solve 90% of the problem?
I'm serious here, can some a heavy/long-time user of X illustrate cases where they NEED network transparency built in (besides that it is "elegant" technically)? The only thing I can think of is having remote windows "integrate" with your local X server - but is this a COMMON CASE at all? I would imagine the common case to be temporarily using remote apps (potentially on an entirely seperate desktop instance) in which case it doesn't matter (or is in fact beneficial) that they are visually distinct, OR using an ENTIRE remote desktop (KDE, Gnome, etc.) in which case ALL your apps will be "integrated" visually since they will all be running on the remote machine.
In what circumstances would you WANT disparate remote applications, from potentially multiple remote machines, integrating invisibly in your current desktop ?(I for one would think this would be hell of a confusing! "Shit did I just 'rm' that file on my local machine, or the server!??") What is the benefit here? What is the cost?
They could always, I dunno, NOT SEND the signals to your house. Whether that is technologically feasible is their problem not ours. As you can tell, I don't have much sympathy for the cable company/AOL/TimeWarner/GE/CentralizedMedia/Kitchen Sink.
A lot the fuck is the difference. For example, how are you going to identify foreign/remote students or visiting professors? Your social security number should not be used as an identifier, and smart universities have already implemented some other system. In fact, IIRC, you are not even obliged to give your SSN out.
I think people are missing the point. AFAIK, Freenet is not supposed to be an alternative whizzy network for general use from which people should expect fast downloads and response times, and be able to download MP3s or warez or whatever. It's mostly to support free speech. I'm sure that activist in China is not just going to give up because it took them 10 seconds to upload instead of 1...when the alternative is not being able to speak at all.
"or free (as in 'I won't get shot for this') speech?"
So now you will just be shot for using freenet.
Re:Shouldn't need to be like this
on
Family Tech Support
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· Score: 2, Interesting
"Maybe, just maybe, PCs have reached the end of their useful lifecycle."
Personal computers, no. The PC architecture proper, yes. A long time ago. We're finally seeing things like serial ATA, USB, etc, and now some new tech from Intel and AMD on a universal bus that can be used for both graphics and other I/O. There is no reason computers need to be as complicated as they are (besides the awful reason of backwards compatibility). You should plug it in and it should just work. Got a new/upgraded component? Pop out the old one and pop in the new one. No f*cking with jumpers, no f*cking with IRQs, no f*cking with drivers (there is now a movement to "embed" drivers in the devices themselves). Apple at least is making good strides at this.
"If you modify this source and make binaries the source must be provided no later that three months later".
Hmm...sounds suspiciously like copyright. So maybe the answer is to fix copyright law so that useful things aren't hoarding WAY after the "incentive" to create them in the first place has gone away.
In other words, while the FSF made many valuable contributions to the Linux "movement" as it were, seeking to rename Linux is at best presumptuous.
This illustrates the whole point of specifically naming it "GNU/Linux" to get accross the point that it's not that the FSF has "helped the Linux movement", it's that Linux has helped the "Free Software Movement". Of course the "Free Software" part gets totally drowned out by the Linux hype. It is much harder to pitch the abstract and ideological concept of Free Software, than it is to pitch "a better operating system". Or at least that is my perception of the FSF stance. I do believe that the FSF has been drowned out...ask competent IT managers in industry today and they will know what Linux is (and this has only happened by clobbering them over the head with IBM advertising), but I doubt they will be as familiar with the Free Software movement (which at its root is a philosophical and ethical movement, not an economic movement).
When you skip over commercials you are stealing therefore you are aiding and abetting terrorism, therefore you are an unlawful combatant and can be held indefinately and tried in a military tribunal without access to a lawyer.
Remember THAT when you skip over commercials you communist terrorist scum!
Personally I do not think there is any expression PRESENT in advertising towards very young children, although I do agree this is just a peeve
Another question is whether non-human entities have free speech to begin with. The whole corporation/person dichotomy. Personally I'm not so sure individual rights can or should extend to groups independent of attachment to a given person (conservatives will pull out the case of labor unions).
I understand that in principle, but in reality, free speech IS qualified. The obvious case is yelling fire in a crowded theater or making credible threats on the presidents life (which could be generalized to "harrassment", forms of which are also illegal) - which have no EXPRESSIVE value (unless done by some crackpot art house???). While in principle an argument could be made that we shouldn't do this (e.g., abridgement of speech due to apocryphal "national security" reasons, etc.), in reality, we do and can make reasonable distinctions between what is speech and what is not. I cannot infringe copyright for "free speech" for instance. I cannot divulge court records which have been prohibited, etc. etc.
So while it's all and good to make a stand on the principle, we already rightly qualify free speech. Cases are heard all the time about the subjective "expressive" nature of speech, which ends up being determined subjectively by judges. Not whether said expressive nature is GOOD or BAD, but whether it is PRESENT. Personally I do not think there is any expression PRESENT in advertising towards very young children, although I do agree this is just a peeve, and there are other areas where free speech concerns are much more important (abridged political speech, code as speech, etc. etc.).
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Sounds like your users have problems with Unix, not "open source" per se. I'm not sure how to familiarize people with Unixisms. There was no manual that said "here is how to compile and install stuff" (well, besides the INSTALL file!!). I learned by doing.
Java will have genericity (i.e. templates) in 1.5, and by all accounts it will be implemented much better than C++ templates (too bad it has taken so long though).
Aha! Here is a solid example where built-in transparency trumps "remote viewing". When the remote machine cannot afford to host the graphics of an application at all (no video card, low memory, whatever) and MUST send them directly to the client. Thanks.
Hi Mike :) (i'm an autopackage lurker)
Thanks for the response. I agree built-in network transparency is technically elegant. I just hope the functionality that is being merged in to support more "mainstream" desktop uses can be integrated without the network transparency architecture causing too much trouble (for one, anything displaying real-time non-vector graphics, e.g. games, I would think would be completely incompatible with network transparency). I will leave it up to the X developers to sort it out, and perhaps a fork is justified if the X team cannot move fast enough on these issues. It's always the last 10%...
I understand the premise of network transparency. I use Windows as a client most of the time and with the help of the Cygwin X Server (great job by the way Cygwin guys, I love rootless), I often run remote apps. So I understand why you would want to run remote apps. However, I *also* use VNC, for instance to manipulate a remote OS X Mac.
My question is what (if any) circumstances are there where some sort of "standalone" remote-viewing implementation would NOT be sufficient for the what X's built-in network transparency is used for. For instance, a standalone remote-viewing implementation could always grab remote bitmaps of apps and show them on your client (perhaps using the X protocol or something like it, like VNC, etc.). *Functionally* I cannot think of a difference for my uses. The superficial difference would be that perhaps visually the windows would not integrate that well with the rest of the desktop. The question I am asking is whether this is a reasonable price to pay for built-in network transparency which has made the (increasingly) common usage of X (standalone client with high level of visual features) more difficult.
Let me add a bit more...
This is not to mention the fact that since nobody can (or will) decide on window managers or toolkits, apps currently look different and are non-integrated ANYWAY, regardless of whether you integrate the network transparency at the X level.
Also, what does it say that KDE has rebuilt standalone remote-viewing functionality in the face of built-in X network transparency?
Ok, I've participated in many X "discussions" and the one feature of X that is always trumpeted is the out of the box network transparency.
As the Windows and Mac OS GUIs increase in sophistication, we have seen that they have been able to add in "network transparency" to an extent (ok more like "remote viewing") with things like VNC, and other implementations, that exist entirely seperate from the GUI proper - they basically implement a very very basic bitmap-copying protocol.
Is there a case where THIS IS NOT SUFFICIENT? Is it really that much of a win to burden the entire architecture with a feature that in its common use can be implemented completely seperately and still solve 90% of the problem?
I'm serious here, can some a heavy/long-time user of X illustrate cases where they NEED network transparency built in (besides that it is "elegant" technically)? The only thing I can think of is having remote windows "integrate" with your local X server - but is this a COMMON CASE at all? I would imagine the common case to be temporarily using remote apps (potentially on an entirely seperate desktop instance) in which case it doesn't matter (or is in fact beneficial) that they are visually distinct, OR using an ENTIRE remote desktop (KDE, Gnome, etc.) in which case ALL your apps will be "integrated" visually since they will all be running on the remote machine.
In what circumstances would you WANT disparate remote applications, from potentially multiple remote machines, integrating invisibly in your current desktop ?(I for one would think this would be hell of a confusing! "Shit did I just 'rm' that file on my local machine, or the server!??") What is the benefit here? What is the cost?
Hydrogen huh? Have you tried hot grits?
And wasn't it called "copyright"?
Wouldn't shortening copyright duration in general for software be more palatable than requiring full GPLing of source?
They could always, I dunno, NOT SEND the signals to your house. Whether that is technologically feasible is their problem not ours. As you can tell, I don't have much sympathy for the cable company/AOL/TimeWarner/GE/CentralizedMedia/Kitchen Sink.
"what the fuck is the difference?"
A lot the fuck is the difference. For example, how are you going to identify foreign/remote students or visiting professors? Your social security number should not be used as an identifier, and smart universities have already implemented some other system. In fact, IIRC, you are not even obliged to give your SSN out.
I think people are missing the point. AFAIK, Freenet is not supposed to be an alternative whizzy network for general use from which people should expect fast downloads and response times, and be able to download MP3s or warez or whatever. It's mostly to support free speech. I'm sure that activist in China is not just going to give up because it took them 10 seconds to upload instead of 1...when the alternative is not being able to speak at all.
"or free (as in 'I won't get shot for this') speech?"
So now you will just be shot for using freenet.
"Maybe, just maybe, PCs have reached the end of their useful lifecycle."
Personal computers, no. The PC architecture proper, yes. A long time ago. We're finally seeing things like serial ATA, USB, etc, and now some new tech from Intel and AMD on a universal bus that can be used for both graphics and other I/O. There is no reason computers need to be as complicated as they are (besides the awful reason of backwards compatibility). You should plug it in and it should just work. Got a new/upgraded component? Pop out the old one and pop in the new one. No f*cking with jumpers, no f*cking with IRQs, no f*cking with drivers (there is now a movement to "embed" drivers in the devices themselves). Apple at least is making good strides at this.
The nerve! I demand that their free service accomadate my tastes!
How about the Veteran's of Ideological Wars?
...it says my best friend is a widow from Nigeria...
Why were we wasting all our time on buffer overflows and cryptography, when the real threat all along has been...
COSMIC RAYS!!
Teach him the delete command.
He'll learn real fast that way.
It's probably the reason I'm doing anything with computers today.
("YOU DID **WHAT** WITH OUR NEW $3000 COMPUTER??")
...because I hear that houses created with century old technology and which are industructible will be really hot on the market in 100 years!
When you skip over commercials you are stealing therefore you are aiding and abetting terrorism, therefore you are an unlawful combatant and can be held indefinately and tried in a military tribunal without access to a lawyer.
Remember THAT when you skip over commercials you communist terrorist scum!
I understand that in principle, but in reality, free speech IS qualified. The obvious case is yelling fire in a crowded theater or making credible threats on the presidents life (which could be generalized to "harrassment", forms of which are also illegal) - which have no EXPRESSIVE value (unless done by some crackpot art house???). While in principle an argument could be made that we shouldn't do this (e.g., abridgement of speech due to apocryphal "national security" reasons, etc.), in reality, we do and can make reasonable distinctions between what is speech and what is not. I cannot infringe copyright for "free speech" for instance. I cannot divulge court records which have been prohibited, etc. etc.
So while it's all and good to make a stand on the principle, we already rightly qualify free speech. Cases are heard all the time about the subjective "expressive" nature of speech, which ends up being determined subjectively by judges. Not whether said expressive nature is GOOD or BAD, but whether it is PRESENT. Personally I do not think there is any expression PRESENT in advertising towards very young children, although I do agree this is just a peeve, and there are other areas where free speech concerns are much more important (abridged political speech, code as speech, etc. etc.).