Oh and I forgot to say this. Having a larger non-IE userbase does have an advantage: web designers will be forced to write W3C-compliant HTML instead of MS HTML. They will be forced to make their websites work on non-IE browsers. This way, all of us will win; online banking and shopping will work on all browsers. Wouldn't that be great?
"Who cares if it convinces IE users to switch? The goal is to be better, not convince people that it's better."
Yeah wait until 10 trolls flame at you with "YOU SUCK!!! IE IS KING!!!" _every single day_. People will laugh and flame you just because you don't use IE.
"you're right, they care about web pages looking good in the browser they choose to use. How do you get that? Oh yeah, standards compliance."
You forgot one thing: most "web designers" design their web pages for Internet Explorer - including all of it's broken behavior and non-compliance. And we do we get? Microsoft HTML. Unless web designers get a clue and stop designing only for IE, and until IE is standards compliant too, making your browser W3c compliant doesn't help much.
You're missing my point. This isn't about wether innovations are possible. This is about whether *big* innovations are possible; innovations that will convince the masses of IE users to switch.
MS won by being "good enough". Now we have to make something *significantly* better in order to gain a big market share. But can we make something significantly better? What big innovations are possible in a mature product?
Browsers are mature. IE, Mozilla, Netscape, Konqueror, Opera, etc. are all mature pieces of software now. What "innovations" can you put in mature software, other than small details? If big innovations are possible in mature software, then people wouldn't stick to MS all the time. Remember that a lot of MS software won because they were "good enough", not because they were "the best".
Then which OSses HAVEN'T reached their end? BeOS? Dead. (the open source clones/alternatives are far from ready) Windows? Even 2000 and XP aren't nearly as stable as Unix and are completely non-portable.
Sorry but I don't see any other OS ruling the server market for quite some time.
What *I* think is irrelevant. What "we", geeks, think, are irrelevant. The majority, average users, don't want to learn. And we don't have the power to force them to.
Because that won't work. You can "innovate" as much as you want to, people simply won't switch.
Yeah, you can give people a whole different desktop methaphor, but average users don't WANT to learn! They demand things to Just Work(tm) and to work like they used too. Too many people are used to Windows; they will not use something that's even slightly different. People are resistant to change, especially regarding to computers. If I put my mother behind a different desktop, she will NOT like it, no matter how "innovative" it is.
"Innovation" is only an argument for geeks. And since Slashdot is a geek community, of course posts about "innovation" gets modded up. But the average user don't care.
"or innovate and create something people will actually want to use."
But that is the problem. People don't WANT to learn something new! "Average users" want things to just work. They want zero learning curve. They DEMAND things to work the like the way they used to.
"Then it began to sink in, the GUI is too much like windows."
I don't get you people. Many, MANY people complain that Linux on the desktop is dead because the desktops don't look enough like Windows and the transition is too hard. Some of them even demand to copy Windows entirely, including the underlying filesystem structure.
And now, YOU suddenly jump in and say the GUI looks *too much* like Windows? That it discourages people from learning "handy terminal commands"? People complain how "average users don't WANT to learn the terminal" and you complain about how this discourages people from learning the terminal?!
For the same reason why everybody and his pet whines when a new version of a Linux distro is released? *They* don't *have* to upgrade either! Yet they still complain about it.
Which means either those people are stupid too, or YOU are stupid because you're the minority.
Because, in contrary to popular belief, Slashdot is actually a pro-Windows site. A poll from a while ago proved that the majority of the Slashdotters are using Windows, *not* Linux/Unix/Mac. More and more moderators are modding critism against Linux up and anti-MS posts down. Slashdotters are slowly converting to pro-Windows; in fact, 65% has already been converted.
"I for my part don't think that it is a big difference if one single piece hits north america(or europe, which is my side of the earth) or if 100s of parts are spread all over the northern hemisphere."
Don't smaller pieces have bigger chance of burning away in the atmosphere?
"1. GCC: My sense is that it is not a very high performance compiler - is that true? Would a better GCC make a big difference to the free software/oss world?"
That depends on what you mean by "high performance". If you mean how fast GCC can compile stuff, then it's probably not the fastest compiler in this world. Hopefully precompiled headers support will change this. But if you mean code speed, then GCC 3.2 is great. It generates code that rivals that of Intel C++.
You don't get it do you? XRandR is not vaporware! I am not saying "it should be fixed any time soon now", I am saying it WILL be fixed by the next release of XFree86. Support for XRandR WILL be included in the next release of GNOME and KDE. Want more proof? Look here, here, here, and here.
Comments like yours are so typical: denying the entire existance of a project just because it's a work-in-progress. You're exactly like the people who said fontconfig is just talk and vapor, one day before fontconfig was suddenly released.
Then it will be included in the default install of RedHat/Mandrake/Debian/Caldera/etc? Why, when it is finished of course! Just like XFree86 4.1 was included in distros when it was finished, and 4.2 was included when it was finished, 4.3 with the XRandR extension will be included when it is finished.
This is a work in progress. I'm only giving information that is it currently being fixed! What are you complaining about, that you can't bring stuff from the future to the present?
You don't get it do you? Anonym0us Cow Herd said something about screen resolution changing, so I replied and told him this is currently being worked on, and gave him extra information (what the name of the project is).
You, as a desktop user, WILL NOT be affected by the name 'XRandR'. All you will see is a control panel applet, in which you can change the resolution. And that's it: It Will Just Work(tm).
Again, I only told him about XRandR because I was giving him extra information. And somehow you use that to complain about something totally unrelated? Are you just stupid or do you complain for the sake of complaining?
If your pa and ma has a P75 then Windows XP won't even work at all, or VERY slowly. Linux still works but you have to use an alternative shell. What are you complaining about? They're using outdated hardware, *of course* they have to spend some time getting things right. Windows/Mac/BeOS/whatever are no different.
Slashdot Mirror
"I think that Mozilla's current feature set is good enough. It doesn't wash your dishes for you,"
*gasp*
The kitchen sink they put in Mozilla doesn't wash dishes for you?
Wow, I never knew!!!
Oh and I forgot to say this.
Having a larger non-IE userbase does have an advantage: web designers will be forced to write W3C-compliant HTML instead of MS HTML. They will be forced to make their websites work on non-IE browsers.
This way, all of us will win; online banking and shopping will work on all browsers. Wouldn't that be great?
"Who cares if it convinces IE users to switch? The goal is to be better, not convince people that it's better."
Yeah wait until 10 trolls flame at you with "YOU SUCK!!! IE IS KING!!!" _every single day_. People will laugh and flame you just because you don't use IE.
"you're right, they care about web pages looking good in the browser they choose to use. How do you get that? Oh yeah, standards compliance."
You forgot one thing: most "web designers" design their web pages for Internet Explorer - including all of it's broken behavior and non-compliance. And we do we get? Microsoft HTML.
Unless web designers get a clue and stop designing only for IE, and until IE is standards compliant too, making your browser W3c compliant doesn't help much.
I'm not talking about standards compliance, I'm talking about feature set. In other words, visible things that average users care about.
/sbin/fsck about standards compliance.
Try talking to some random people on the street. Most of them don't give a
You're missing my point. This isn't about wether innovations are possible. This is about whether *big* innovations are possible; innovations that will convince the masses of IE users to switch.
MS won by being "good enough". Now we have to make something *significantly* better in order to gain a big market share. But can we make something significantly better? What big innovations are possible in a mature product?
Well good for you, but will those little features convince the masses of IE users to switch? I don't think so.
Browsers are mature. IE, Mozilla, Netscape, Konqueror, Opera, etc. are all mature pieces of software now.
What "innovations" can you put in mature software, other than small details?
If big innovations are possible in mature software, then people wouldn't stick to MS all the time. Remember that a lot of MS software won because they were "good enough", not because they were "the best".
"The third rule of slashdot is ... DO NOT TALK ABOUT LINUX( in a negative way)
... DO NOT TALK ABOUT MICROSOFT( in a positive way)"
... DO NOT TALK ABOUT LINUX( in a positive way)
... DO NOT TALK ABOUT MICROSOFT( in a negative way)
The fourth rule of Slashdot is
Actually, these two rules have been reversed recently.
The third rule of slashdot is
The fourth rule of Slashdot is
Well good for you. We still have 30000000+ people who *didn't* switch.
Then which OSses HAVEN'T reached their end?
BeOS? Dead. (the open source clones/alternatives are far from ready)
Windows? Even 2000 and XP aren't nearly as stable as Unix and are completely non-portable.
Sorry but I don't see any other OS ruling the server market for quite some time.
What *I* think is irrelevant. What "we", geeks, think, are irrelevant. The majority, average users, don't want to learn. And we don't have the power to force them to.
Because that won't work. You can "innovate" as much as you want to, people simply won't switch.
Yeah, you can give people a whole different desktop methaphor, but average users don't WANT to learn! They demand things to Just Work(tm) and to work like they used too. Too many people are used to Windows; they will not use something that's even slightly different.
People are resistant to change, especially regarding to computers. If I put my mother behind a different desktop, she will NOT like it, no matter how "innovative" it is.
"Innovation" is only an argument for geeks. And since Slashdot is a geek community, of course posts about "innovation" gets modded up. But the average user don't care.
"or innovate and create something people will actually want to use."
But that is the problem. People don't WANT to learn something new!
"Average users" want things to just work. They want zero learning curve. They DEMAND things to work the like the way they used to.
"Innovation" will NOT make people switch.
"Then it began to sink in, the GUI is too much like windows."
I don't get you people.
Many, MANY people complain that Linux on the desktop is dead because the desktops don't look enough like Windows and the transition is too hard. Some of them even demand to copy Windows entirely, including the underlying filesystem structure.
And now, YOU suddenly jump in and say the GUI looks *too much* like Windows? That it discourages people from learning "handy terminal commands"? People complain how "average users don't WANT to learn the terminal" and you complain about how this discourages people from learning the terminal?!
Make up your mind already!
For the same reason why everybody and his pet whines when a new version of a Linux distro is released? *They* don't *have* to upgrade either! Yet they still complain about it.
Which means either those people are stupid too, or YOU are stupid because you're the minority.
Because, in contrary to popular belief, Slashdot is actually a pro-Windows site. A poll from a while ago proved that the majority of the Slashdotters are using Windows, *not* Linux/Unix/Mac. More and more moderators are modding critism against Linux up and anti-MS posts down. Slashdotters are slowly converting to pro-Windows; in fact, 65% has already been converted.
"I for my part don't think that it is a big difference if one single piece hits north america(or europe, which is my side of the earth) or if 100s of parts are spread all over the northern hemisphere."
Don't smaller pieces have bigger chance of burning away in the atmosphere?
"1. GCC: My sense is that it is not a very high performance compiler - is that true? Would a better GCC make a big difference to the free software/oss world?"
That depends on what you mean by "high performance".
If you mean how fast GCC can compile stuff, then it's probably not the fastest compiler in this world. Hopefully precompiled headers support will change this.
But if you mean code speed, then GCC 3.2 is great. It generates code that rivals that of Intel C++.
You don't get it do you? XRandR is not vaporware! I am not saying "it should be fixed any time soon now", I am saying it WILL be fixed by the next release of XFree86. Support for XRandR WILL be included in the next release of GNOME and KDE.
Want more proof? Look here, here, here, and here.
Comments like yours are so typical: denying the entire existance of a project just because it's a work-in-progress. You're exactly like the people who said fontconfig is just talk and vapor, one day before fontconfig was suddenly released.
Then it will be included in the default install of RedHat/Mandrake/Debian/Caldera/etc? Why, when it is finished of course! Just like XFree86 4.1 was included in distros when it was finished, and 4.2 was included when it was finished, 4.3 with the XRandR extension will be included when it is finished.
This is a work in progress. I'm only giving information that is it currently being fixed! What are you complaining about, that you can't bring stuff from the future to the present?
You don't get it do you? Anonym0us Cow Herd said something about screen resolution changing, so I replied and told him this is currently being worked on, and gave him extra information (what the name of the project is).
You, as a desktop user, WILL NOT be affected by the name 'XRandR'. All you will see is a control panel applet, in which you can change the resolution. And that's it: It Will Just Work(tm).
Again, I only told him about XRandR because I was giving him extra information. And somehow you use that to complain about something totally unrelated? Are you just stupid or do you complain for the sake of complaining?
You mean GNOME 2? An application menu bar on the top of the screen, reversed button order, etc.
And yet, those things are *exactly* one of the things people complain about most. They want a Windows look, not a Mac one.
If your pa and ma has a P75 then Windows XP won't even work at all, or VERY slowly. Linux still works but you have to use an alternative shell.
What are you complaining about? They're using outdated hardware, *of course* they have to spend some time getting things right. Windows/Mac/BeOS/whatever are no different.
Then why is opening a browser, looking for DivX 3.11 and installing it, NOT too much for a "typical" user?