It's not "his personal problem" with open source. It's A LOT of people's problem with open source. Plus, anytime someone actually dares to say some interface is, shall we say, less than optimal, someone like you comes out of the woodwork to say "don't you dare tell me what to spend my time on! If you want it fixed, why don't you lead the effort to fix it yourself!"
Yes! Because it isn't their problem. It's your problem. And if you want it solved, you need to put your money where your mouth is and give people an incentive.
Therein lies the problem. You want desperately for Linux to succeed, but you don't want to actually spend the time and effort working on the things that ordinary users care about.
And yet Linux is already wildly successful. The only place it isn't is on the end-user desktop, which is dominated by Microsoft and the huge pile of software that depends on Microsoft-only technologies present only in Windows.
No it's not. It's a whiny person demanding other people's time and effort be focused on their personal problem with open source. Perhaps if he actually cared, he would lead the charge himself. Paying people is a good way to focus them on your problems.
Maybe if it wasn't more worthwhile to focus on areas where Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly, people might care about it.
And maybe, five minutes later, I can post again. Stupid fucking post timer.
There needs to be a way to use the software on my machine that doesn't require me to open a MAN page and edit a config file.
Fine. Find someone and pay them to implement it.
There's a simple reason for this; people do not have TIME to do these things.
They also don't have time to implement your hand-holding.
The utopian world of thousands of sweaty, Cheetos-encrusted Metallica T-Shirt-wearing geeks the world over writing code that will break the Microsoft monopoly is permanently doomed to failure because you all think that design is making a Mac OSX Metacity theme.
Asshole demands and attitudes like this are totally deserving of being ignored. And the vast majority of people working on stuff like this aren't being paid to fix the problem all the whiny "but why aren't you making it easier!" people complain about.
User Interface design has nothing to do with making things "pretty"-- it has to do with making things usable. This is something where nearly all F/OSS fails.
It is usable. But not for people whose interest in understanding the technology they use is basically zero. And the people doing the development have no interest in making it work for them. This is not THEIR problem, however.
Making software that does work cleverly is good. Making it intuitive and powerful is excellent. That's not dumbing it down; you'll find that making a user interface that works well, and designing software to do things right, quickly, is significantly harder than writing good, clean code.
Maybe that's why they say fuck it to writing silly GUIs for things that don't need it, and instead focus on the problem at hand?
Shifting the blame of not being able to design an interface well to users being "stupid" is shameful-- don't blame your inadequacies on anyone but yourself.
Maybe you've given them zero reason to care? Have you ever thought that they just might have absolutely dick in terms of obligations to you, or the others like you that insist on having everything done for them?
If you want your interaction with Apple to be minimal, why do you actually care?
I care because Apple does have huge influence in the mobile market. I also care because I used to like Apple a lot, then they decided that the mobile space (and your device) was the private property of Apple, Inc.
I see this all the time yet Apple is the only one to act like this. Why doesn't Google get into hot water over Android, or Intel over all the open source stuff it does?
Or maybe the SOX excuse is made up by people trying (but otherwise unable) to explain Apple's charges?
Broadband is a network industry, much like air travel.
Relevance = zero.
the less regulation there is, the more unthrottled, source-neutral and content-neutral bandwidth you are likely to have access to five years from now for the same dollar.
So what am I supposed to do, exactly, to get this increased neutral bandwidth? My speed hasn't changed in 3 years, except when I doubled my monthly outlay. In that time Comcast has rolled out 250GB/mo caps to most of the country (but not here, apparently) and Verizon has stopped rolling out FiOS.
Under regulation, you may force all providers to offer source-neutral and content-neutral bandwidth, but nobody said they have to offer you anything over 5 megabits without a huge surcharge.
I believe you are looking at the issue wrong. Perhaps instead of insisting that the companies will do what is best for us and keep giving us increasing bandwidth for lower prices, assume they will do what they have been doing and giving us less service, lower caps, and threatening to fuck up other services coming to their customers in favor of theirs.
Maybe the best bet would be for the FTC to forcibly split the network half from the content half, and THEN we could have actual competition in the ISP market.
It makes me wonder: * Will it be included with 10.7? If not, then * How long until the price goes up and * Is Apple going to attempt to control how software is installed on OS X?
It's moves like this that made me reduce OS X to a minimal 32GB partition on my Macbook and install Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, and make me avoid iOS products like the plague.
Funny. The FCC has the ability to regulate telecommunications companies, and that is what they are being asked to do. Not the Internet. THE CARRIERS. The greedy, manipulative pieces of shit that hate the internet for what it is.
They could have marked them as Tier II carriers, and didn't for reasons I cannot fathom.
And fuck what is with this long-ass timer between comments on Slashdot?
No user wants to know how or why things happen. They just want it all to work. Ubuntu is close as you will get if you keep hanging onto that paradigm.
Then tell all those vendors to stop using crippled OSes like Android and iOS, and to stop using proprietary components (like webOS, which uses a proprietary framebuffer and a proprietary IPC system) and *nix users might adopt them. Until then, all they're doing is saying "please abandon everything that's been done to date and adopt this system that we alone control! Because Linux!"
Only on/. would a bunch of computer nerds be complaining about a big OEM installing a Linux variant on their PCs.
Because it's all "oh it's our custom Linux that has all sorts of proprietary elements that you can't replace, but that makes it User Friendly, unlike all those terrible open source bits."
Both of which are beset by either proprietary or NIH elements that break them away from Linux as a whole.
What value is there in a kernel when the user space and environment are wholly dependent on elements you cannot access, and have no ability to influence?
I see it like this: IIRC, Franklin didn't patent his stove design. What if he'd sold one to someone, they quickly realized he'd not patented it, then they patent it. That gives them a right to his profits, without having done any work, all because he neglected to patent his invention before selling it.
It could be a problem, if the USPTO ignores prior art that directly covers the application at hand. If first-to-file allows them to post the applications publicly within a short time frame, you could easily point to an example of prior art that existed before the filing date and nullify it entirely.
By using software patents loaded with royalties that make it impossible to redistribute software using them. Oh sure, Mozilla could pay for the royalties, but no one who distributed Firefox could do so anymore without stripping the h.264 code out.
A consortium of 20 companies is far preferable to a single BDFL who effectively decides what will run on the web and what won't.
Even when the "BDFL" basically puts it into the open and goes hands-off? They're just putting a video codec out into the open, not deciding what will and will not run on the web (in contrast to Adobe and Microsoft, who are and have tried, respectively.)
"I want to sell a better codec, but it's impossible because Google gives away mediocre ones."
I see this sort of sentiment leveled against open source software all the time, what makes it more true now than before?
Pushing it only because it'll allow your corporation to dictate by fiat the possible business models for web video, that's something too.
Like h.264, who have a whole schedule of royalties based upon your business model? The only one that gets a free pass, mind you, is free-streaming video.
OTOH, acting like something that is "inherently unfree" is worse, regardless of useful it is, is pretty childish.
So pursuing alternatives to royalty-encumbered standards is childish. Got it. Time to start paying for those software patents. Perhaps instead we should just give up on open source entirely, because using it and considering it superior in any way is childish in the face of even moderately useful closed source, proprietary solutions. Gotcha.
Google and OSS people have to stop being like a little kid and accept that H.264 is already everywhere from mobile devices to GPU's and HDTV's and HTML5 will not get anywhere if it isn't used.
They can accept it all day long and want to distribute software that will encode and decode h.264, but where do you expect for them to get the money for the per-copy royalties from? Of course, being unwilling to push software that is inherently un-free is acting like a little kid.
I've found commercial licenses far easier to deal with than GPL, and that alone is why our company doesn't bother with anything that has GPL attached to it, its just not worth the effort.
Funny, the GPLv2 and v3 are actually shorter than pretty much every EULA I've had the misfortune of stopping to look at. I'm sure your lawyers could do a cursory reading for you, otherwise what are you paying them for?
Most people who have a "problem" with the GPL are people who wish they could just jack the code and contribute nothing back and get whiny when they find that they can't. They then lash out against the people behind such licenses and the people that use them, because they're grumpy that they have to play by the rules instead of getting a free ride.
If I make an app where I can throw birds at pigs that happens to use a GPL'ed JSON library, it doesn't mean that the whole app has to be open-sourced does it?
Depends, is the library LGPL'd or GPL'd?
If it's GPL'd, yes. If it's LGPL'd, you only have distribute the source for (and changes to) the library. Think of it by looking (VERY CLOSELY) at glibc and Qt.
It underlined the importance of culture and noted the need to 'strengthen the development of civic morality' and 'speed up the establishment of moral and behavioral norms that carry forward traditional Chinese virtues.'
Or in other words: suppress the flow of information that might threaten CCP rule, and push more magical-thinking hogwash created by the CCP down the people's throat. Just like every other "morality" or "virtue" rule the CCP has pushed in the past 30+ years.
Some places give their kids a chance to be responsible. Having grown up in the states, I find that many parents fight hard to keep their children from responsibility until the last possible minute.
Fuck, my school would confiscate CDs, console games, and various other things they had no business taking. Dumb as shit and I still can't find a reason for it.
La la la la, waiting for five minutes to pass so I can participate in the conversation again.. thanks, SLASHDOT, for a five minute delay and HTML that breaks in Firefox on login (hey, when I can I have comment counts on the front page while logged in, Taco?)
They failed bigtime at Meego with multiyear delays
MeeGo has existed for just over a year, and is still underway. Nokia's failure was entirely internal and resulted in them obstructing the growth of Maemo. Don't point and MeeGo and say "it has failed" when you actually mean Nokia.
Well, at least I can then finally buy some ARM notebooks and put a decent Linux distribution on it.
And I expect the market for ARM-based Windows 8 devices to be just as horrible as it is now, in terms of replacing the OS, as it is for tablets and phones. Lack of drivers, binary only video drivers, and lock down to prevent people from actually removing the OS.
And here I was hoping that the transition to ARM would get us away from Microsoft's domination. Now it could very well be enforced in hardware.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes! Because it isn't their problem. It's your problem. And if you want it solved, you need to put your money where your mouth is and give people an incentive.
And yet Linux is already wildly successful. The only place it isn't is on the end-user desktop, which is dominated by Microsoft and the huge pile of software that depends on Microsoft-only technologies present only in Windows.
No it's not. It's a whiny person demanding other people's time and effort be focused on their personal problem with open source. Perhaps if he actually cared, he would lead the charge himself. Paying people is a good way to focus them on your problems.
Maybe if it wasn't more worthwhile to focus on areas where Microsoft doesn't have a monopoly, people might care about it.
And maybe, five minutes later, I can post again. Stupid fucking post timer.
Fine. Find someone and pay them to implement it.
There's a simple reason for this; people do not have TIME to do these things.
They also don't have time to implement your hand-holding.
Asshole demands and attitudes like this are totally deserving of being ignored. And the vast majority of people working on stuff like this aren't being paid to fix the problem all the whiny "but why aren't you making it easier!" people complain about.
It is usable. But not for people whose interest in understanding the technology they use is basically zero. And the people doing the development have no interest in making it work for them. This is not THEIR problem, however.
Maybe that's why they say fuck it to writing silly GUIs for things that don't need it, and instead focus on the problem at hand?
Maybe you've given them zero reason to care? Have you ever thought that they just might have absolutely dick in terms of obligations to you, or the others like you that insist on having everything done for them?
I care because Apple does have huge influence in the mobile market. I also care because I used to like Apple a lot, then they decided that the mobile space (and your device) was the private property of Apple, Inc.
I see this all the time yet Apple is the only one to act like this. Why doesn't Google get into hot water over Android, or Intel over all the open source stuff it does?
Or maybe the SOX excuse is made up by people trying (but otherwise unable) to explain Apple's charges?
It makes me wonder:
* Will it be included with 10.7? If not, then
* How long until the price goes up and
* Is Apple going to attempt to control how software is installed on OS X?
It's moves like this that made me reduce OS X to a minimal 32GB partition on my Macbook and install Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, and make me avoid iOS products like the plague.
Funny. The FCC has the ability to regulate telecommunications companies, and that is what they are being asked to do. Not the Internet. THE CARRIERS. The greedy, manipulative pieces of shit that hate the internet for what it is.
They could have marked them as Tier II carriers, and didn't for reasons I cannot fathom.
And fuck what is with this long-ass timer between comments on Slashdot?
Then tell all those vendors to stop using crippled OSes like Android and iOS, and to stop using proprietary components (like webOS, which uses a proprietary framebuffer and a proprietary IPC system) and *nix users might adopt them. Until then, all they're doing is saying "please abandon everything that's been done to date and adopt this system that we alone control! Because Linux!"
Because it's all "oh it's our custom Linux that has all sorts of proprietary elements that you can't replace, but that makes it User Friendly, unlike all those terrible open source bits."
Both of which are beset by either proprietary or NIH elements that break them away from Linux as a whole.
What value is there in a kernel when the user space and environment are wholly dependent on elements you cannot access, and have no ability to influence?
It could be a problem, if the USPTO ignores prior art that directly covers the application at hand. If first-to-file allows them to post the applications publicly within a short time frame, you could easily point to an example of prior art that existed before the filing date and nullify it entirely.
By using software patents loaded with royalties that make it impossible to redistribute software using them. Oh sure, Mozilla could pay for the royalties, but no one who distributed Firefox could do so anymore without stripping the h.264 code out.
Even when the "BDFL" basically puts it into the open and goes hands-off? They're just putting a video codec out into the open, not deciding what will and will not run on the web (in contrast to Adobe and Microsoft, who are and have tried, respectively.)
I see this sort of sentiment leveled against open source software all the time, what makes it more true now than before?
Like h.264, who have a whole schedule of royalties based upon your business model? The only one that gets a free pass, mind you, is free-streaming video.
So pursuing alternatives to royalty-encumbered standards is childish. Got it. Time to start paying for those software patents. Perhaps instead we should just give up on open source entirely, because using it and considering it superior in any way is childish in the face of even moderately useful closed source, proprietary solutions. Gotcha.
They can accept it all day long and want to distribute software that will encode and decode h.264, but where do you expect for them to get the money for the per-copy royalties from? Of course, being unwilling to push software that is inherently un-free is acting like a little kid.
Was the source available and buildable, or just binaries popped from the emulator?
Google is very good at making the AOSP and the community surrounding it second class citizens. Has this changed?
Funny, the GPLv2 and v3 are actually shorter than pretty much every EULA I've had the misfortune of stopping to look at. I'm sure your lawyers could do a cursory reading for you, otherwise what are you paying them for?
Most people who have a "problem" with the GPL are people who wish they could just jack the code and contribute nothing back and get whiny when they find that they can't. They then lash out against the people behind such licenses and the people that use them, because they're grumpy that they have to play by the rules instead of getting a free ride.
Depends, is the library LGPL'd or GPL'd?
If it's GPL'd, yes. If it's LGPL'd, you only have distribute the source for (and changes to) the library. Think of it by looking (VERY CLOSELY) at glibc and Qt.
I'm sorry, what was your rambling point about? Superiority of the CCP or something?
Or in other words: suppress the flow of information that might threaten CCP rule, and push more magical-thinking hogwash created by the CCP down the people's throat. Just like every other "morality" or "virtue" rule the CCP has pushed in the past 30+ years.
Some places give their kids a chance to be responsible. Having grown up in the states, I find that many parents fight hard to keep their children from responsibility until the last possible minute.
Fuck, my school would confiscate CDs, console games, and various other things they had no business taking. Dumb as shit and I still can't find a reason for it.
La la la la, waiting for five minutes to pass so I can participate in the conversation again.. thanks, SLASHDOT, for a five minute delay and HTML that breaks in Firefox on login (hey, when I can I have comment counts on the front page while logged in, Taco?)
We do? Which cities? What city do I live in that you know this?
Wait, where's this gun at? Have you ever been here, or are you going on what you see in the movies?
MeeGo has existed for just over a year, and is still underway. Nokia's failure was entirely internal and resulted in them obstructing the growth of Maemo. Don't point and MeeGo and say "it has failed" when you actually mean Nokia.
And I expect the market for ARM-based Windows 8 devices to be just as horrible as it is now, in terms of replacing the OS, as it is for tablets and phones. Lack of drivers, binary only video drivers, and lock down to prevent people from actually removing the OS.
And here I was hoping that the transition to ARM would get us away from Microsoft's domination. Now it could very well be enforced in hardware.