There's also SRTP. RTP is the protocol used with the actual sound, which is encoded in some way (g711 ulaw is very common). SRTP is an encrypted version of the protocol.
GnomeMeeting is cool, but it uses h.323 for call setup, widely considered to be on its way out in the voip world. Microsoft has dropped NetMeeting, which GnomeMeeting was designed to replace. Replacing h.323 is SIP. KPhone is a good Linux SIP softphone.
Basically, I believe Skype uses a proprietary call setup scheme (instead of h.323 or SIP), along with standard stuff like RTP and some kind of sound encoding. Then they made it really easy to use.
Finally, there is IAX2. It is open, documented, supported by the biggest open source pbx (Asterisk), and does NAT traversal very well. I'd love to see dedicated soft and hardphones using this protocol.
Of course, you'd have to layer your EJBs/servlets/whathaveyou on top, but hey, it's a start. And it gets you away from the horrible Asterisk Manager interface.
Well, I'm talking about KDE, not pure Qt. You can't develop KDE software for Windows, so it's not really an issue. Agreed, if you want to use pure Qt (which won't have the advantages of KDE), and distribute it for Windows, then you'll have to buy a license.
To answer your question: yes, more or less.;) In its most basic form, it is RPC calls made over the Internet. Rather than some binary format (like DCOM or whatever), the RPCs are just text - XML. The template is SOAP (or XMLRPC, if your needs are simple).
Of course, there are other considerations - security, authentication, and so forth. But those are just extras layered on top. Check out the XMLRPC spec to get a very basic idea of how it works. SOAP is like XMLRPC, but way more developed.
Microsoft capitalises everything. I am not a MS developer, and I haven't been since 2000 or so, but just because something is technically simple doesn't mean they can't market the hell out of it, I guess.
Practically all commercial software is C++ based. There are many, many, MANY C++ application software developers out there.
The people who are bothered by C++ are generally kids who taught themselves C in their spare time (and good for them for taking the initiative), but are intimidated by the demands of object design and so forth. Or they are old curmudgeons who stopped learning in 1989 or thereabouts.
Anyway, there are lots of nice bindings for KDE. I am a big fan of PyKDE. I've heard the Ruby bindings are good, too.
Finally, Qt's current license is only a "problem" if you want to close the source of your app and sell it. In that case, you have to buy a copy of Qt. So where's the problem?
The fact that it's C++ based (with many other bindings - for example, I work with the excellent PyKDE at various times) is a huge plus. C is a shitty, shitty desktop and application language. Practically NO commercial desktop software is written in C, and there's a very good reason for that: it's time-consuming (time is money, as we all know) and produces bug-ridden code.
The GNOME people, who are a very smart bunch, understand this perfectly. Thus, Mono.
That said, C is a great systems language for kernels and such. I code in it regularly at my job, in fact. But for userland? Forget it.
Yeah, that's what I thought. And HTTP 1.0 is obsolete. 1.1 has pipelined requests, which takes care of your concern, I believe, although I'm not at all sure it's an issue. What transaction are you talking about? Application transactions would be controlled at a higher level than the transport layer. Or do you mean the HTTP session?
In web services land, HTTP is just one type of transport. SOAP is decoupled from the transport, so I think your concern is unfounded. Can you give me an example of how HTTP will "constrain the features" of a web service call?
My company's app that I write code for every day is controlled via XMLRPC (kind of like SOAP without the steroids) over HTTP. Python has native support for it via xmlrpclib - very nice stuff to work with, I must say.
Anyhow, this stuff is here to stay. It's not new technology - fundamentally, it's just RPCs made using XML and HTTP. Pretty basic stuff, but very flexible and open. And already in widespread usage - Amazon and Google both offer nice sets of web services. So your curmudgeonly characterisation of them as "buzzword compliance" seems unfounded.
Did I miss something? I didn't see any mention of HTTP 1.0, which is obsolete. 1.1 is what's far and away in the most common usage, and it allows pipelined requests.
That said, SOAP isn't necessarily confined to HTTP transport, though of course in all practical reality it is, for now. But there's no tight binding there.
Anyway, what does the transport have to do with the "spectrum of object management requirements"? Or am I just not understanding your statement?
Actually, they sometimes have good interviews. Because they are a big name, they get access to the Big Names (I enjoyed the Bill Joy interview a while back).
But yeah, it's sometimes fun to dish out the techno-snobbery - hell, I don't have much else to be snobbish about, so why not.:)
I don't even know what to say to this...um, a lot of people into technology aren't into it because of sales potential. In fact, they couldn't care less. Let's leave it at that.
It's a whiz-bang mag for people with little or no technical background, which is okay, but it inevitably means people with technical knowledge will despise it for being sensationalist. Which it is.
You can plug regular phone lines, T1s, E1s, etc. into Asterisk once you've equipped the machine with the right hardware (PCI cards you buy from Digium). Then, internally, you can use analogue or IP phones to communicate with the PBX.
Digium makes one called the X100P that is around $99, last I checked. But the same chipset can be found on various cheapo modem cards (I've used ones by Tiger Jet - around $10 - in the past). But you'll have to make a slight modification to the wcfxo driver to get them to work. It's not hard, but if you don't know what you're doing, just go with the Digium cards, which will work trouble-free out of the box.
I didn't say the two party solution in the U.S. is the best way to go. I certainly agree that adding more parties to the mix would be good. But I don't agree with the libertarian platform on certain key points, so I'd rather see them stay on the fringe, thanks.
Most other western democracies have a multi-party system and a wide variety of representation. Cooperation is often the norm. What's saddest about the American situation is the brutal partisan politics and visceral hatred between "conservatives" and "liberals". It seems like sometimes the name-calling drowns out meaningful debate.
As for "the mess" you're in, I'd say you're correct regarding your eroded civil liberties (as you so eloquently put it). It's a grave concern for all Americans, or it should be. But they are not irreparable damages, and it doesn't take political parties of absolute radicals to fix them.
But 1100 acres is nothing. Try the millions of acres it takes to preserve a cohesive ecosystem. Who is going to privately own such a massive area as, say, Banff National Park, and not carve it up and sell it? Libertarians seem utterly clueless as to what real wilderness is, versus some piddly little recreational area like what you're talking about. If only every second landowner is interested in preservation, you'll end up with a patchwork of land, some preserved, some not, and nothing that resembles an ecosystem of scale.
If you still don't see what I'm talking about, get a map and look at the province of British Columbia, in Canada. Look at the size of those areas. In the north, Mount Edziza Provincial Park doesn't even have access roads - you have to walk in, or take a floatplane. And the walk takes 3 days. Who would own such a vast area? There aren't enough people here to buy it. It would be sold and carved up in an instant, a great tragedy were it to occur.
Overall, I'm happy that the libertarians will forever remain a fringe group. That's an unpopular opinion around here, but I think the "simple solutions for all problems!" approach is naive and scary.
Is there no CVS / Can you send me the code of the current development version of the engine?
No, I cannot send you the code I am currently working on. If I want someone to use new or updated code of the engine, I'll create a new release. And I am not going to create very unstable preview versions of the engine, because I don't have the time to answer thousands of arising questions which are caused by the inmaturity and instability of the released code. This is also the same reason, why I don't set up an CVS server, although lots of users are demanding this. Sorry.
So I guess it's only old code that's available. I remember looking at this project long ago, and there was no code available at all. Anyway, he still doesn't accept patches, which is of course entirely his prerogative.
Slashdot Mirror
There's also SRTP. RTP is the protocol used with the actual sound, which is encoded in some way (g711 ulaw is very common). SRTP is an encrypted version of the protocol.
GnomeMeeting is cool, but it uses h.323 for call setup, widely considered to be on its way out in the voip world. Microsoft has dropped NetMeeting, which GnomeMeeting was designed to replace. Replacing h.323 is SIP. KPhone is a good Linux SIP softphone.
Basically, I believe Skype uses a proprietary call setup scheme (instead of h.323 or SIP), along with standard stuff like RTP and some kind of sound encoding. Then they made it really easy to use.
Finally, there is IAX2. It is open, documented, supported by the biggest open source pbx (Asterisk), and does NAT traversal very well. I'd love to see dedicated soft and hardphones using this protocol.
Actually, frymaster is not an American.
I read about this on the Asterisk mailing list:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/jasterisk/
Of course, you'd have to layer your EJBs/servlets/whathaveyou on top, but hey, it's a start. And it gets you away from the horrible Asterisk Manager interface.
Yeah, like "hooqqa" is a really cool fucking name...fuck off, you stupid cunt.
Well, I'm talking about KDE, not pure Qt. You can't develop KDE software for Windows, so it's not really an issue. Agreed, if you want to use pure Qt (which won't have the advantages of KDE), and distribute it for Windows, then you'll have to buy a license.
Hi, sorry for the late reply.
;) In its most basic form, it is RPC calls made over the Internet. Rather than some binary format (like DCOM or whatever), the RPCs are just text - XML. The template is SOAP (or XMLRPC, if your needs are simple).
To answer your question: yes, more or less.
Of course, there are other considerations - security, authentication, and so forth. But those are just extras layered on top. Check out the XMLRPC spec to get a very basic idea of how it works. SOAP is like XMLRPC, but way more developed.
Microsoft capitalises everything. I am not a MS developer, and I haven't been since 2000 or so, but just because something is technically simple doesn't mean they can't market the hell out of it, I guess.
Practically all commercial software is C++ based. There are many, many, MANY C++ application software developers out there.
The people who are bothered by C++ are generally kids who taught themselves C in their spare time (and good for them for taking the initiative), but are intimidated by the demands of object design and so forth. Or they are old curmudgeons who stopped learning in 1989 or thereabouts.
Anyway, there are lots of nice bindings for KDE. I am a big fan of PyKDE. I've heard the Ruby bindings are good, too.
Finally, Qt's current license is only a "problem" if you want to close the source of your app and sell it. In that case, you have to buy a copy of Qt. So where's the problem?
The fact that it's C++ based (with many other bindings - for example, I work with the excellent PyKDE at various times) is a huge plus. C is a shitty, shitty desktop and application language. Practically NO commercial desktop software is written in C, and there's a very good reason for that: it's time-consuming (time is money, as we all know) and produces bug-ridden code.
The GNOME people, who are a very smart bunch, understand this perfectly. Thus, Mono.
That said, C is a great systems language for kernels and such. I code in it regularly at my job, in fact. But for userland? Forget it.
Yeah, that's what I thought. And HTTP 1.0 is obsolete. 1.1 has pipelined requests, which takes care of your concern, I believe, although I'm not at all sure it's an issue. What transaction are you talking about? Application transactions would be controlled at a higher level than the transport layer. Or do you mean the HTTP session?
In web services land, HTTP is just one type of transport. SOAP is decoupled from the transport, so I think your concern is unfounded. Can you give me an example of how HTTP will "constrain the features" of a web service call?
My company's app that I write code for every day is controlled via XMLRPC (kind of like SOAP without the steroids) over HTTP. Python has native support for it via xmlrpclib - very nice stuff to work with, I must say.
Anyhow, this stuff is here to stay. It's not new technology - fundamentally, it's just RPCs made using XML and HTTP. Pretty basic stuff, but very flexible and open. And already in widespread usage - Amazon and Google both offer nice sets of web services. So your curmudgeonly characterisation of them as "buzzword compliance" seems unfounded.
Did I miss something? I didn't see any mention of HTTP 1.0, which is obsolete. 1.1 is what's far and away in the most common usage, and it allows pipelined requests.
That said, SOAP isn't necessarily confined to HTTP transport, though of course in all practical reality it is, for now. But there's no tight binding there.
Anyway, what does the transport have to do with the "spectrum of object management requirements"? Or am I just not understanding your statement?
Actually, they sometimes have good interviews. Because they are a big name, they get access to the Big Names (I enjoyed the Bill Joy interview a while back).
:)
But yeah, it's sometimes fun to dish out the techno-snobbery - hell, I don't have much else to be snobbish about, so why not.
I don't even know what to say to this...um, a lot of people into technology aren't into it because of sales potential. In fact, they couldn't care less. Let's leave it at that.
It's a whiz-bang mag for people with little or no technical background, which is okay, but it inevitably means people with technical knowledge will despise it for being sensationalist. Which it is.
In short, Wired is technology as fashion.
Yes, and in fact, Nufone uses Asterisk.
You can plug regular phone lines, T1s, E1s, etc. into Asterisk once you've equipped the machine with the right hardware (PCI cards you buy from Digium). Then, internally, you can use analogue or IP phones to communicate with the PBX.
Er, and after doing all of that, kill X - it's a high priority process. That's why your screensaver screwed things up.
Asterisk and Festival have long played well together. So this wouldn't be too tough. It's certainly a good idea.
And it's "Asterisk".
Digium makes one called the X100P that is around $99, last I checked. But the same chipset can be found on various cheapo modem cards (I've used ones by Tiger Jet - around $10 - in the past). But you'll have to make a slight modification to the wcfxo driver to get them to work. It's not hard, but if you don't know what you're doing, just go with the Digium cards, which will work trouble-free out of the box.
I didn't say the two party solution in the U.S. is the best way to go. I certainly agree that adding more parties to the mix would be good. But I don't agree with the libertarian platform on certain key points, so I'd rather see them stay on the fringe, thanks.
Most other western democracies have a multi-party system and a wide variety of representation. Cooperation is often the norm. What's saddest about the American situation is the brutal partisan politics and visceral hatred between "conservatives" and "liberals". It seems like sometimes the name-calling drowns out meaningful debate.
As for "the mess" you're in, I'd say you're correct regarding your eroded civil liberties (as you so eloquently put it). It's a grave concern for all Americans, or it should be. But they are not irreparable damages, and it doesn't take political parties of absolute radicals to fix them.
But 1100 acres is nothing. Try the millions of acres it takes to preserve a cohesive ecosystem. Who is going to privately own such a massive area as, say, Banff National Park, and not carve it up and sell it? Libertarians seem utterly clueless as to what real wilderness is, versus some piddly little recreational area like what you're talking about. If only every second landowner is interested in preservation, you'll end up with a patchwork of land, some preserved, some not, and nothing that resembles an ecosystem of scale.
If you still don't see what I'm talking about, get a map and look at the province of British Columbia, in Canada. Look at the size of those areas. In the north, Mount Edziza Provincial Park doesn't even have access roads - you have to walk in, or take a floatplane. And the walk takes 3 days. Who would own such a vast area? There aren't enough people here to buy it. It would be sold and carved up in an instant, a great tragedy were it to occur.
Overall, I'm happy that the libertarians will forever remain a fringe group. That's an unpopular opinion around here, but I think the "simple solutions for all problems!" approach is naive and scary.
Actually, I read the FAQ:
Is there no CVS / Can you send me the code of the current development version of the engine?
No, I cannot send you the code I am currently working on. If I want someone to use new or updated code of the engine, I'll create a new release. And I am not going to create very unstable preview versions of the engine, because I don't have the time to answer thousands of arising questions which are caused by the inmaturity and instability of the released code. This is also the same reason, why I don't set up an CVS server, although lots of users are demanding this. Sorry.
So I guess it's only old code that's available. I remember looking at this project long ago, and there was no code available at all. Anyway, he still doesn't accept patches, which is of course entirely his prerogative.
1. Yes. If you don't pay for the binary, you aren't entitled to the source.
2. The engine was not released under the GPL in the first place.
What makes you think the source code is available?
Newsflash: it's not.
Thanks for the correction. I actually run Debian - you'd think I'd know that...
Mandrake is still one of the biggest Linux desktops. Just because you forgot about them doesn't change this fact.
Debian has no desktop preference.
Novell had a presence at Akademy (KDE conference), and stated they will support KDE.
As for the others, it's Distrowatch - those are the numbers.
Sun's Java Desktop system clearly doesn't register. Sorry.
According to Distrowatch, here are the top-ranked distributions. I've added in their default desktops. "Either" means there is no clear preference.
Your assertion that Gnome is the "default desktop on every major distro" is clearly incorrect.
1. Mandrakelinux - KDE
2. Fedora - Gnome
3. Knoppix - KDE
4. SUSE - KDE
5. Debian - either
6. Slackware - either
7. Gentoo - either
8. MEPIS - KDE
9. PCLinuxOS - KDE
10. Damn Small - Fluxbox