CRTs were a good deal in 1999 when LCDs were expensive garbage. Today, you can get an excellent 17" screen, with DVI, for under $300.
True, but a good many 17" LCD panels cannot do over 1024x768, and I haven't seen *any* that will do over 1280x1024. I have a 19" CRT that runs comfortably at 1600x1200, and it cost $350 when I bought it 2.5 years ago. If I want an LCD that can do 1600x1200 (I won't settle for anything less on my desktop machine), I'm looking at 20", often 21" (as many 20" LCDs only do 1280x1024), and at least $800 for a good-quality screen.
Tabbed browsing? I do believe that Opera had it first.
Strictly speaking, no, they didn't. IIRC, Opera originally (and maybe still does, I don't know) had some weird abortion of an MDI-type thing where each "tab" was it's own window as a child of the main Opera window. Frankly, when I tried this out (pre-Firefox), it kinda annoyed me. Sometimes closing one child window would cause another child to become active, but not maximised. Etc., etc.
Perhaps Opera was the first to implement the idea of having multiple web pages open inside one parent window, but Firefox (er, PhoenixBird) was the first to use an actual tabbed interface. Whether or not that counts as being innovative is an exercise left to the reader. At worst it's an incremental improvement on an existing idea.
What's utterly innovative about Firefox that I'm missing?
It's not really innovative in the sense that they did anything new. It's just a better browser, aiming to be standards compliant and provide only the must-have features, including some nice usability enhancements (like tabbed browsing). Personally, I don't care if you want to call Firefox "innovative" or not: in my opinion, it's the best browser currently out there, and that's the metric I go by. YMMV, of course.
MySQL? [...]
Who said MySQL was innovative? If you want to talk about innovative, check out PostgreSQL's feature-set. MySQL's popularity is more about marketing than anything else (not that it's not a good, solid DB, but it's lacking in advanced features).
PHP? Yet another clone of MS's ASP. Yes, MS did invent that kind of server-side inline scripting. (Yes, I know they're supposed to never have invented anything. Sorry 'bout letting reality get in the way of that.)
As others have pointed out, PHP came before ASP. Whoopsie. Those pesky facts.
Really, I'm not seeing the point of your post: "Ok, let me pick some random OSS projects that I don't think are innovative. Oooh! Look! The only conclusion that can be drawn is that OSS as a whole isn't innovative." Moron.
Remember, in Rosen's view, that's all the same thing. The only way to *legally* get any music that will play on the iPod is to:
Rip it from your own CDs
Buy it from iTMS
Now, for #1, the *format* you rip to can be AAC, MP3, or (I think) WAV/PCM. But that's not really relevant.
The real thing she's complaining about (and rightly so, though it's totally hypocritical) is that the only place people can *purchase* songs from the Internet and have them work on the iPod is from iTMS. Anywhere else that you can purchase songs has MS DRM on it.
(Yeah, I know, there's AllofMP3.com, but Rosen likely considers it illegal, and there are a couple, like Warp Records, that sell DRM-free tracks, but they cater more to niche music which Rosen probably considers irrelevant. Not that I agree with that view, but that's just how it is.)
Video processing chips have embedded microprocessors, either general (ARM or MIPS) or DSP (several types). For nontrivial functions there are often both. The code for these is, however, not stored in off-chip memory -- it's internal, in mask ROMS. A change to those ROMS requires new masks for the device, although the mask changes can usually be confined to the upper layers and therefore cost less to implement.
Ah, I see what you mean. I generally make a distinction between the higher level application firmware in a device and the device's ROM image.
That's assuming that there are any external "hooks" that would allow an external device to process the BF. Considering the economics of keeping the whole video processing pipe in one chip, that's unlikely. It's certainly not the kind of thing that would have been done without the expectation of a need for a disableable BF function, and if that's all it would also be easier to include other means to disable it.
That's a good point that I hadn't thought of. With more designers making use of the "system on a chip" model, probably all we can see at the output of the chip is a decoded and processed video stream, or, depending on the device, something suitable to jam into an ATSC/NTSC/PAL/RGB/DVI/etc video encoder for output to your favorite display device.
(For the record, I've worked with several chipsets like you describe, mainly from ALi, Sigma Designs, and Equator, though not at a terribly low level.)
Still, though, I would find it really hard to believe that a new BF-including chipset design wouldn't be flexible enough to sell in markets where the BF isn't required. Perhaps something as simple as a few external connections (or lack of connections) between a few pins on the chip. Or maybe flashing the device with different ROM images for different markets. From what I've seen in my work, most companies aren't too keen on expending R&D dollars on inflexible region-specific solutions. Even if the initial cost is a little higher, it's much more worthwhile to design something that can be sold worldwide.
The cow-orkers are wondering why I'm laughing so hard.
I'm not really sure why, since at the very least your use of terminology in the rest of your post betrays your lack of knowlege in the area.
A "firmware redesign"? What the hell is that? Firmware is software, no matter how you'd like to define it. If it's well-designed software (i.e., modular), and the BF functionality is implemented in software (which, IIRC, it's not), it's a simple matter of pulling out or disabling the BF bits (or modifying the surrounding code to ignore the BF code path).
If the NRE costs for designing the BF-enabling silicon are spent, there's little to gain by including extra fab costs to mass-pro the silicon and include it on capture (etc.) boards if it's not needed.
That's assuming the BF circuitry is on its own chip. Depending on the device manufacturer's resources, that could go either way, as it's much cheaper (NRE-wise, anyway) to design a secondary device to handle the BF instead of redesigning the entire capture/processing device to accomodate the BF.
If the logic for implementing the BF is on the same chip as the rest of the video processing, then sure, doing a full redesign of the silicon would be a waste of money. But considering that the BF was only going to be required in the United States, and most of these companies are international, I'd be very surprised if there wasn't an "easy" (for the manufacturer, anyway) way to disable the BF portion of the chip, even without removing it.
Now, if they sell their reference board design to third parties who want to rebrand it, they might try to push the BF functionality anyway, with a higher price tag, in order to try to recover some cost.
Bottom line is that, as you've said, they've almost certainly already sunk a good chunk of change into designing BF functionality. But there's no benefit to keep that functionality around in instances where leaving it out results in a cheaper product.
I'm not sure that that would necessarily be better. Now the corporate types only have to "convince" the governors and state legislatures to keep their favored candidates in power, rather than having to hope/rely on the plan that the people will keep their "convinced" Senators in power.
I'm guessing you don't really know how this kind of product development process works. As soon as a new design or board rev is on the drawing boards, they'll be quick to notice they can shave 50c or a dollar off the cost by leaving out the silicon that handles the broadcast flag, and poof - it's gone.
This is, of course, assuming its implemented in hardware. If it's done in software, it'll be trivial to disable, and there'd be little reason to keep it enabled.
Are you kidding me? Have you ever tried programming GUIs or, god have mercy on our souls, an internet application in C?!
Yes and yes. I'm not sure why you think that's such a difficult/bad idea.
Java is perfectly suited for applications like Azureus. It's ability to work and look similiar across multiple platforms (meaning less time spent programming multiple versions) means the developers can spend more time working on what really matters: a good BT client.
Yep, I'm totally with you here. Writing a good, multi-torrent BT app is hardly a trivial endeavor.
So what if the GUI stalls a smidge, it actually does what it's supposed to do, and took a hell of a lot less time to develop than if it had been in a different language.
Except that, if I run Azureus normally, with 3-5 torrents open, my system slows to a crawl, with even the mouse movement jerky. I don't have the fastest machine (Athlon 1.33GHz, 640MB RAM), but that's just unacceptable. If I renice Azureus up to +6 or so, my system is fine, but then Azureus' GUI takes quite a while to respond. I don't mind too much, since I usually just let it run, with RSSFeed automatically grabbing the things I want.
Woah, dude, chill out. I was merely playing devil's advocate. I was in no way endorsing the 24/7 tracking of people, and nowhere did I ever say I was.
Interesting. Do you think you're "normal"? Do you think that everyone should be held to your standards? Do you think every criminal should be "nailed" for every offense they commit?
For the record, yeah, I do think I'm pretty normal (well, in reference to the topic at hand). I'm not sure of how exactly you mean "nailed", but yeah, I do think everyone should have to pay for their offences (regardless if they're "criminals" or not). See, I happen to believe in this thing called "personal responsibility". Everyone is responsible for their own actions. If you do something wrong, even if it was just an "accident", you should accept the consequences of your actions.
However, every crime/misdemeanor/whatever is different, and, even when we're talking about two people committing the same offence, there are always nuances and differences in the situations. Ideally, all possible factors should be taken into account when determining punishment and sentencing. In reality, this doesn't always happen.
No, I'm not in favor of all these draconian tracking measures, and I'm not sure why you're implying that I am, as nothing in my earlier post even referenced any kind of personal tracking devices.
What do you think of traffic cameras?
I have no problem with red-light cameras. I've lived in places where people running red lights was a big problem, and I truly believe these cameras help deter idiots who run red lights. About 15 years ago my mother was driving my sister (who was around 5 years old at the time, maybe younger) somewhere, and a guy ran a red light and slammed into my mom's car. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt, but it was a terrible ordeal for my family, and it could have been a lot worse.
As the system works _right now_, I think that general-purpose traffic monitoring devices would be unfair. I wouldn't be comfortable with traffic-monitoring cameras that automatically fine me for going over the speed limit. I wouldn't be comfortable with insurance companies (or anyone) requiring a GPS in my car for any purpose.
They catch _everyone_ who makes a mistake. You don't have to be a "criminal" (by your definition) to get a summons from a traffic camera.
Straw man. People who speed and even people who run red lights or drive aggressively aren't criminals. That's irrelevant, and my original post had nothing to do with that -- again, you're inventing an argument where none exists.
But sure, I'll take the bait. Let's talk about these traffic cameras. Let's assume a couple things here. Assume that all speed limits in the entire world are fair, and that they actually do represent the maximum safe driving speed. Assume that there is a way to dynamically change the speed limit based on weather, road conditions, etc., and imagine that all drivers are roughly equal in how well they handle a vehicle under various conditions. In that case, what's wrong with having cameras to monitor the roads, and automatically fine people who speed? Sure, people make mistakes, even unintentional ones. But driving a car isn't a game: you should accept the consequences of your mistakes, mistakes that can and do cause deaths. Automobiles kill more people (percentage-wise) than any other form of transportation. The leading cause of automobile accidents, the last time I read up on the subject, was drivers losing control due to excessive speed. Why should innocent, random people have to die just so you can get from home to the office 30 seconds sooner?
Bottom line: it sounds like you're saying that anyone should just be allowed to make mistakes, no matter who else it affects -- up to and including ruining other people's lives -- and yet they shouldn't be held accountable, and shouldn't have to b
Except that speeding isn't a criminal offence, and I don't think getting drunk and peeing in the street is, either. (Misdemeanors?) Stealing a stick of gum from a store when you were a minor probably isn't considered a criminal offence either. The bill-paying example is even worse: there's nothing in the criminal code that says you have to pay your bills at all, let alone on time. It's a civil matter.
I'm not a criminal, at least not in the legal definition of the word.
Let me guess... you're not a developer, right? From what I understand, Apple doesn't send back patches for specific issues, they just periodically make a tarball of their webcore tree and lob it at the KHTML devs. A 'diff -u' would probably give you a 5-10MB patch file. Is it useful? Sure. But it's a royal pain in the ass to sort through it and figure out what does what.
And why is this important, you ask? KHTML, like any rendering engine for a complex document format, is a complex piece of software. If you're going to change it, you need to be absolutely sure that the changes aren't going to have an impact on another part of the rendering pipeline. You can't do that when you have 5+MB worth of multiple possibly-unrelated changes to sort through.
I'm relatively sure that's the case in the US as well. The car owner is responsible for the road-worthiness of the car. Granted, the person who cut the brake lines would be guilty of a crime, but the car owner could still be sued for negligence, IIRC.
By the way, I've never seeded any torrents, so MGM must be going after "leeches" also.
Nope. If you use BitTorrent at all, you're uploading. Granted, you didn't actually say you were downloading via BitTorrent, but I'm not sure why you'd mention it otherwise.
You're lucky then. At worst, I've seen as many as 20 minutes of commercials per hour on US TV. Judging by episodes of the TV shows I download, the average seems to be around 17 minutes/hour.
Congratulations, you just made my point. Are these 7 applications supposed to be a significant cross-section of the actual Windows application base, or am I missing something?
Yes and yes. That was the point.
The problem with Linux is that there is no standard. I cannot code a simple app and expect that it will work on every distro...
That's ridiculous. If you want to ship a GUI app for the majority of modern Linux desktop distros, write it using gtk2 or qt3. For the newer users that selected a default install, it's likely that both qt3 and gtk2 were installed by default. For more experienced users, just list gtk2 (or qt3) as a requirement on your website or in the documentation. This isn't brain surgery.
Are you, by chance, a developer who works with X11 GUIs on Linux? Funny, I am, and I wouldn't call it "fragmented, inconsistent and generally hard to support from a development POV". Far from it. Really, the only trouble I have is (for example) when I want to make use of convenient features only present in gtk 2.6, but want to support users of gtk 2.4. But that's hardly the type of issue you're talking about.
Is it perfect? Certainly not. Occasionally, as you note with the AbiWord example, someone screws up and things break. But that's by far the exception to the rule. And it's not like things are any different on Windows, what with the varying versions of the MFC.dll floating around. Add in the VB and/or.NET runtimes for apps developed with those frameworks, and you have more problems.
Again, I'm not saying that Linux/X11 is perfect: far from it. But the problems you describe are simply nowhere near as awful as you say, and Windows has its own problems, of similar severity from a development standpoint. Not to mention that I find working with the likes of MFC to be a horrid experience..NET is probably a bit nicer, but I haven't done any Windows GUI programming in years. But I digress...
Ok, you want more Windows apps that use custom widgets?
Here we go.
Norton AV and Norton Internet Security. (window borders, buttons... basically everything)
Adaware. (same as Norton)
Adobe Reader (custom toolbar widgets, and the dropdown boxes look strange on my machine)
Skype (custom tab widget)
ICQ (custom window border, buttons, list view)
Netscape 8 (custom title bar, disgusting color scheme that doesn't follow Windows' color settings)
Easy CD Creator (custom framing widgets)
That's just a quick sample based on either stuff that's on my work machine, or stuff I've seen on other people's machines. And I tend to use several Gtk apps on my Windows box (if I have to use Windows, I might as well make it vaguely bearable). At least they look consistent with each other (and with the wimp theme, almost fit in perfectly with Windows itself). I imagine there are plenty of other common apps that I don't use but others do that also use non-standard stuff.
The point for me isn't that on Windows they don't need to load extra libraries, it's the fact that it's so inconsistent (and often really ugly).
On my Linux machine, I run Gtk apps pretty much exclusively. Firefox and Thunderbird use Gtk as well, though they add another layer of abstraction on top. Ditto for OpenOffice, which I don't have open all that often (it's usually quicker and easier to use AbiWord or Gnumeric anyway).
I'm still not seeing how Linux is any worse than Windows in this regard. I'd say it's better, but I'll be generous to your argument and stay it at least isn't worse. I don't care that these other apps are written by different companies and that it isn't Microsoft's fault. Or maybe it is: maybe if they had an established intuitive GUI stack that didn't encourage people to reinvent GUI concepts (no,.NET isn't used widely enough yet to count), then we wouldn't have all these stupid-looking Windows apps. I dunno. What I do know is that my Linux desktop experience looks far more consistent than a relatively equivalent Windows experience, and that's what matters to me most.
Ah, I remember that one. It's funny how literally *every* (former) IE user that I introduced Firefox to went absolutely nuts after I said "now hit ctrl+t". Really, everyone loves tabs.
Who cares if they may at some future, hypothetical date have an interest in the clothing business? Kraft's "Milka" brand clearly applies to chocolate - and only chocolate. I don't know how French trademark law works, but in the US, trademarks only apply to the specific industry that the product is marketed in. And that's the way (IMO) it should be. If Kraft wants to start using their Milka brand to sell clothing, they should have to apply for a new trademark (or amend their existing trademark). Why should common citizens have to avoid certain words (especially when it's their given name!) because some corporation *might* at some point in the future elect to use a brand name for something totally unrelated to what it's used for today?
As an oft-repeated example, take Apple Computer and Apple Music. Both have a trademark for "Apple", as it applies to their respective industries. (Though I believe there was some noise from Apple Music being pissed off about Apple Computer selling music via iTMS; I don't know how [or if] that was resolved.)
There's also the Air2PC card, which will do HDTV and is supported under Linux.
I recently bought a pcHDTV card, and I must say I'm disappointed so far. I don't yet have HDTV capabilities (haven't decided between buying an antenna or paying the $5/mo extra for the HD decoder box from Comcast), and the NTSC tuner is piss-poor. The picture is fuzzy, and the colors are all off (and I still can't get it right, even after hours of tweaking the color settings).
Note that the Air2PC and the pcHDTV (with driver patches) both support QAM, so it's possible to decode *unencrypted* cable signals. Unfortunately, until we have cablecard-capable hardware, we're not going to be able to decrypt encrypted cable stations. And by the time we have that, we'll have the broadcast flag to contend with...
I agree that that timetable for the analog->digital TV switchover in the US will probably be extended further, considering that prices for HDTV sets is still generally much more than that for regular sets - and they don't seem to be dropping quickly enough. Most CRT HDTVs will run you 3-4x the cost of a normal CRT TV. Good-sized LCD and plasma TVs are still out of reach for the average consumer (and even above-average consumer). I just don't see US consumers rushing out to replace their TVs, and D/A downconverters are likely pretty expensive too (so people can watch reduced-quality digital broadcasts on their analog TVs).
Funny how you chose not to quote my entire sentence. The point being that the kernel development series is *not* different from E17 - except that the kernel devs provide periodic releases.
That's their choice, and entirely beside the point. The point is that just because something is deemed a "release" doesn't endow it with magical powers of stability. A release can be just as alpha-quality and buggy as a CVS snapshot and belief to the contrary is simply illusion.
You're missing the point again.
Regular releases encourage developers to keep their code in a buildable, maintainable state.
Regular releases - whether actually stable or not - give packagers an attractive target with which to create pacakges, and they have a reasonable expectation that packagers from other distros will build packages.
Regular releases, especially with packages for their distro's package manager, attract users to try it out, much more than saying "hey download this CVS snapshot and compile and install it" does.
In the general sense, more users means more feedback, and often more developer interest. Of course, as I said, more interest also means you have to deal with the clueless people that end up doing nothing but waste your time.
Again, you're missing the point. This isn't just about what they said most recently. It's about what has been said/done in the past. These guys and others have long scoffed at E for being nothing but eye candy, and now here they are saying the same things raster said years ago. I think he has a right to say "I told you so."
Well, that's different then. My assumption was you were basically ragging on them for the two recent blog posts referenced in TFA. However, the bottom line is that, these days, for the average Linux user (and even above-average), E *is* nothing but eye candy. It's not usable in the sense that I feel like I could sit down and make it my primary desktop environment without annoyances. Obviously, you feel differently - but I'd argue that the majority of people out there feel as I do. I dunno, maybe E needs a marketing department to get more exposure - if that's what the community wants, but I get the feeling that you guys just want to sit up in your castle, play with your toys, and pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist, while taking potshots at anyone who dares meddle with technology that's so old hat to you guys, you haven't made a *real* release of said technology after years of work.
The problem is relevance. E is not relevant anymore. Yes, people use it. Yes, it's being developed. But it's not relevant. GNOME and KDE are relevant because the developers are satisfied to make baby-step, *useful* improvements rather than sitting down and saying, "Ok, we have great ideas, but they're not too implementable/workable today. We'll take a break from actually being useful and toil for years on the next best thing." To put it another way, if GNOME used E's development model, the vast majority of GNOME users would all still be using GNOME 1.4 right now. (Or, more likely, they would have jumped ship to KDE.) Perhaps, when E17 is finally released, E will become relevant again - I certainly hope so, because it looks like you guys are doing a lot of (quiet) work to make a kickass desktop environment. But it appears that the GNOME and KDE folks have a much more mature understanding about how to run large-scale projects on reasonable timetables to produce useful software in a timely manner.
And cooperation is a 2-way street. We've never hidden what we're doing and why from anyone. We're not viewed as "part of the community" because we don't believe in the same things that the GNOME and KDE camps do. We have very different views on how things should be done. And that's perfectly okay. ... It's not hypocritical at all, and w
And that's different from E 0.17...how, exactly? Oh, wait, it's not.
Funny how you chose not to quote my entire sentence. The point being that the kernel development series is *not* different from E17 - except that the kernel devs provide periodic releases.
I don't think anyone in the E community is complaining about the way things have been. raster was just pointing out the irony that the scoffers are now talking wistfully about technology we offer today. And it works.
Scoffers? Who's scoffing? The posts by Seth and Havoc were about new directions to take, not about putting down the work of others. No, it seems more like raster's acting a bit smugly in a "See what we've been doing? Why haven't you noticed what we've been doing? You're proposing the same thing that we've been doing, and acting like it was your idea! Sheesh!" sort of way. My argument is that if the E devs were more a part of the Linux desktop development community, maybe we'd see some of these nifty things outside of E. The OSS world is about cooperation.
If, as you say, the E community is happy with their place in the world, that's fine. But it's a bit hypocritical for raster to jump out and scoff at Seth's and Havoc's ideas when raster hasn't bothered to collaborate with any of them.
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Perhaps Opera was the first to implement the idea of having multiple web pages open inside one parent window, but Firefox (er, PhoenixBird) was the first to use an actual tabbed interface. Whether or not that counts as being innovative is an exercise left to the reader. At worst it's an incremental improvement on an existing idea. It's not really innovative in the sense that they did anything new. It's just a better browser, aiming to be standards compliant and provide only the must-have features, including some nice usability enhancements (like tabbed browsing). Personally, I don't care if you want to call Firefox "innovative" or not: in my opinion, it's the best browser currently out there, and that's the metric I go by. YMMV, of course. Who said MySQL was innovative? If you want to talk about innovative, check out PostgreSQL's feature-set. MySQL's popularity is more about marketing than anything else (not that it's not a good, solid DB, but it's lacking in advanced features). As others have pointed out, PHP came before ASP. Whoopsie. Those pesky facts.
Really, I'm not seeing the point of your post: "Ok, let me pick some random OSS projects that I don't think are innovative. Oooh! Look! The only conclusion that can be drawn is that OSS as a whole isn't innovative." Moron.
Except for that whole pesky "prior art" thing...
- Rip it from your own CDs
- Buy it from iTMS
Now, for #1, the *format* you rip to can be AAC, MP3, or (I think) WAV/PCM. But that's not really relevant.The real thing she's complaining about (and rightly so, though it's totally hypocritical) is that the only place people can *purchase* songs from the Internet and have them work on the iPod is from iTMS. Anywhere else that you can purchase songs has MS DRM on it.
(Yeah, I know, there's AllofMP3.com, but Rosen likely considers it illegal, and there are a couple, like Warp Records, that sell DRM-free tracks, but they cater more to niche music which Rosen probably considers irrelevant. Not that I agree with that view, but that's just how it is.)
(For the record, I've worked with several chipsets like you describe, mainly from ALi, Sigma Designs, and Equator, though not at a terribly low level.)
Still, though, I would find it really hard to believe that a new BF-including chipset design wouldn't be flexible enough to sell in markets where the BF isn't required. Perhaps something as simple as a few external connections (or lack of connections) between a few pins on the chip. Or maybe flashing the device with different ROM images for different markets. From what I've seen in my work, most companies aren't too keen on expending R&D dollars on inflexible region-specific solutions. Even if the initial cost is a little higher, it's much more worthwhile to design something that can be sold worldwide.
A "firmware redesign"? What the hell is that? Firmware is software, no matter how you'd like to define it. If it's well-designed software (i.e., modular), and the BF functionality is implemented in software (which, IIRC, it's not), it's a simple matter of pulling out or disabling the BF bits (or modifying the surrounding code to ignore the BF code path).
If the NRE costs for designing the BF-enabling silicon are spent, there's little to gain by including extra fab costs to mass-pro the silicon and include it on capture (etc.) boards if it's not needed.
That's assuming the BF circuitry is on its own chip. Depending on the device manufacturer's resources, that could go either way, as it's much cheaper (NRE-wise, anyway) to design a secondary device to handle the BF instead of redesigning the entire capture/processing device to accomodate the BF.
If the logic for implementing the BF is on the same chip as the rest of the video processing, then sure, doing a full redesign of the silicon would be a waste of money. But considering that the BF was only going to be required in the United States, and most of these companies are international, I'd be very surprised if there wasn't an "easy" (for the manufacturer, anyway) way to disable the BF portion of the chip, even without removing it.
Now, if they sell their reference board design to third parties who want to rebrand it, they might try to push the BF functionality anyway, with a higher price tag, in order to try to recover some cost.
Bottom line is that, as you've said, they've almost certainly already sunk a good chunk of change into designing BF functionality. But there's no benefit to keep that functionality around in instances where leaving it out results in a cheaper product.
I'm not sure that that would necessarily be better. Now the corporate types only have to "convince" the governors and state legislatures to keep their favored candidates in power, rather than having to hope/rely on the plan that the people will keep their "convinced" Senators in power.
I'm guessing you don't really know how this kind of product development process works. As soon as a new design or board rev is on the drawing boards, they'll be quick to notice they can shave 50c or a dollar off the cost by leaving out the silicon that handles the broadcast flag, and poof - it's gone.
This is, of course, assuming its implemented in hardware. If it's done in software, it'll be trivial to disable, and there'd be little reason to keep it enabled.
I'd also recommend The Science of Star Wars. It's pretty painstaking and in-depth, but really amusing if you're into that kind of thing.
For the record, yeah, I do think I'm pretty normal (well, in reference to the topic at hand). I'm not sure of how exactly you mean "nailed", but yeah, I do think everyone should have to pay for their offences (regardless if they're "criminals" or not). See, I happen to believe in this thing called "personal responsibility". Everyone is responsible for their own actions. If you do something wrong, even if it was just an "accident", you should accept the consequences of your actions.
However, every crime/misdemeanor/whatever is different, and, even when we're talking about two people committing the same offence, there are always nuances and differences in the situations. Ideally, all possible factors should be taken into account when determining punishment and sentencing. In reality, this doesn't always happen.
No, I'm not in favor of all these draconian tracking measures, and I'm not sure why you're implying that I am, as nothing in my earlier post even referenced any kind of personal tracking devices.
I have no problem with red-light cameras. I've lived in places where people running red lights was a big problem, and I truly believe these cameras help deter idiots who run red lights. About 15 years ago my mother was driving my sister (who was around 5 years old at the time, maybe younger) somewhere, and a guy ran a red light and slammed into my mom's car. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt, but it was a terrible ordeal for my family, and it could have been a lot worse.
As the system works _right now_, I think that general-purpose traffic monitoring devices would be unfair. I wouldn't be comfortable with traffic-monitoring cameras that automatically fine me for going over the speed limit. I wouldn't be comfortable with insurance companies (or anyone) requiring a GPS in my car for any purpose.
Straw man. People who speed and even people who run red lights or drive aggressively aren't criminals. That's irrelevant, and my original post had nothing to do with that -- again, you're inventing an argument where none exists.
But sure, I'll take the bait. Let's talk about these traffic cameras. Let's assume a couple things here. Assume that all speed limits in the entire world are fair, and that they actually do represent the maximum safe driving speed. Assume that there is a way to dynamically change the speed limit based on weather, road conditions, etc., and imagine that all drivers are roughly equal in how well they handle a vehicle under various conditions. In that case, what's wrong with having cameras to monitor the roads, and automatically fine people who speed? Sure, people make mistakes, even unintentional ones. But driving a car isn't a game: you should accept the consequences of your mistakes, mistakes that can and do cause deaths. Automobiles kill more people (percentage-wise) than any other form of transportation. The leading cause of automobile accidents, the last time I read up on the subject, was drivers losing control due to excessive speed. Why should innocent, random people have to die just so you can get from home to the office 30 seconds sooner?
Bottom line: it sounds like you're saying that anyone should just be allowed to make mistakes, no matter who else it affects -- up to and including ruining other people's lives -- and yet they shouldn't be held accountable, and shouldn't have to b
Except that speeding isn't a criminal offence, and I don't think getting drunk and peeing in the street is, either. (Misdemeanors?) Stealing a stick of gum from a store when you were a minor probably isn't considered a criminal offence either. The bill-paying example is even worse: there's nothing in the criminal code that says you have to pay your bills at all, let alone on time. It's a civil matter.
I'm not a criminal, at least not in the legal definition of the word.
Let me guess... you're not a developer, right? From what I understand, Apple doesn't send back patches for specific issues, they just periodically make a tarball of their webcore tree and lob it at the KHTML devs. A 'diff -u' would probably give you a 5-10MB patch file. Is it useful? Sure. But it's a royal pain in the ass to sort through it and figure out what does what.
And why is this important, you ask? KHTML, like any rendering engine for a complex document format, is a complex piece of software. If you're going to change it, you need to be absolutely sure that the changes aren't going to have an impact on another part of the rendering pipeline. You can't do that when you have 5+MB worth of multiple possibly-unrelated changes to sort through.
I'm relatively sure that's the case in the US as well. The car owner is responsible for the road-worthiness of the car. Granted, the person who cut the brake lines would be guilty of a crime, but the car owner could still be sued for negligence, IIRC.
You're lucky then. At worst, I've seen as many as 20 minutes of commercials per hour on US TV. Judging by episodes of the TV shows I download, the average seems to be around 17 minutes/hour.
Are you, by chance, a developer who works with X11 GUIs on Linux? Funny, I am, and I wouldn't call it "fragmented, inconsistent and generally hard to support from a development POV". Far from it. Really, the only trouble I have is (for example) when I want to make use of convenient features only present in gtk 2.6, but want to support users of gtk 2.4. But that's hardly the type of issue you're talking about.
Is it perfect? Certainly not. Occasionally, as you note with the AbiWord example, someone screws up and things break. But that's by far the exception to the rule. And it's not like things are any different on Windows, what with the varying versions of the MFC
Again, I'm not saying that Linux/X11 is perfect: far from it. But the problems you describe are simply nowhere near as awful as you say, and Windows has its own problems, of similar severity from a development standpoint. Not to mention that I find working with the likes of MFC to be a horrid experience.
- Norton AV and Norton Internet Security. (window borders, buttons... basically everything)
- Adaware. (same as Norton)
- Adobe Reader (custom toolbar widgets, and the dropdown boxes look strange on my machine)
- Skype (custom tab widget)
- ICQ (custom window border, buttons, list view)
- Netscape 8 (custom title bar, disgusting color scheme that doesn't follow Windows' color settings)
- Easy CD Creator (custom framing widgets)
That's just a quick sample based on either stuff that's on my work machine, or stuff I've seen on other people's machines. And I tend to use several Gtk apps on my Windows box (if I have to use Windows, I might as well make it vaguely bearable). At least they look consistent with each other (and with the wimp theme, almost fit in perfectly with Windows itself). I imagine there are plenty of other common apps that I don't use but others do that also use non-standard stuff.The point for me isn't that on Windows they don't need to load extra libraries, it's the fact that it's so inconsistent (and often really ugly).
On my Linux machine, I run Gtk apps pretty much exclusively. Firefox and Thunderbird use Gtk as well, though they add another layer of abstraction on top. Ditto for OpenOffice, which I don't have open all that often (it's usually quicker and easier to use AbiWord or Gnumeric anyway).
I'm still not seeing how Linux is any worse than Windows in this regard. I'd say it's better, but I'll be generous to your argument and stay it at least isn't worse. I don't care that these other apps are written by different companies and that it isn't Microsoft's fault. Or maybe it is: maybe if they had an established intuitive GUI stack that didn't encourage people to reinvent GUI concepts (no,
Ah, I remember that one. It's funny how literally *every* (former) IE user that I introduced Firefox to went absolutely nuts after I said "now hit ctrl+t". Really, everyone loves tabs.
Who cares if they may at some future, hypothetical date have an interest in the clothing business? Kraft's "Milka" brand clearly applies to chocolate - and only chocolate. I don't know how French trademark law works, but in the US, trademarks only apply to the specific industry that the product is marketed in. And that's the way (IMO) it should be. If Kraft wants to start using their Milka brand to sell clothing, they should have to apply for a new trademark (or amend their existing trademark). Why should common citizens have to avoid certain words (especially when it's their given name!) because some corporation *might* at some point in the future elect to use a brand name for something totally unrelated to what it's used for today?
As an oft-repeated example, take Apple Computer and Apple Music. Both have a trademark for "Apple", as it applies to their respective industries. (Though I believe there was some noise from Apple Music being pissed off about Apple Computer selling music via iTMS; I don't know how [or if] that was resolved.)
There's also the Air2PC card, which will do HDTV and is supported under Linux.
I recently bought a pcHDTV card, and I must say I'm disappointed so far. I don't yet have HDTV capabilities (haven't decided between buying an antenna or paying the $5/mo extra for the HD decoder box from Comcast), and the NTSC tuner is piss-poor. The picture is fuzzy, and the colors are all off (and I still can't get it right, even after hours of tweaking the color settings).
Note that the Air2PC and the pcHDTV (with driver patches) both support QAM, so it's possible to decode *unencrypted* cable signals. Unfortunately, until we have cablecard-capable hardware, we're not going to be able to decrypt encrypted cable stations. And by the time we have that, we'll have the broadcast flag to contend with...
I agree that that timetable for the analog->digital TV switchover in the US will probably be extended further, considering that prices for HDTV sets is still generally much more than that for regular sets - and they don't seem to be dropping quickly enough. Most CRT HDTVs will run you 3-4x the cost of a normal CRT TV. Good-sized LCD and plasma TVs are still out of reach for the average consumer (and even above-average consumer). I just don't see US consumers rushing out to replace their TVs, and D/A downconverters are likely pretty expensive too (so people can watch reduced-quality digital broadcasts on their analog TVs).
You're missing the point again.
In the general sense, more users means more feedback, and often more developer interest. Of course, as I said, more interest also means you have to deal with the clueless people that end up doing nothing but waste your time.
Well, that's different then. My assumption was you were basically ragging on them for the two recent blog posts referenced in TFA. However, the bottom line is that, these days, for the average Linux user (and even above-average), E *is* nothing but eye candy. It's not usable in the sense that I feel like I could sit down and make it my primary desktop environment without annoyances. Obviously, you feel differently - but I'd argue that the majority of people out there feel as I do. I dunno, maybe E needs a marketing department to get more exposure - if that's what the community wants, but I get the feeling that you guys just want to sit up in your castle, play with your toys, and pretend the rest of the world doesn't exist, while taking potshots at anyone who dares meddle with technology that's so old hat to you guys, you haven't made a *real* release of said technology after years of work.
The problem is relevance. E is not relevant anymore. Yes, people use it. Yes, it's being developed. But it's not relevant. GNOME and KDE are relevant because the developers are satisfied to make baby-step, *useful* improvements rather than sitting down and saying, "Ok, we have great ideas, but they're not too implementable/workable today. We'll take a break from actually being useful and toil for years on the next best thing." To put it another way, if GNOME used E's development model, the vast majority of GNOME users would all still be using GNOME 1.4 right now. (Or, more likely, they would have jumped ship to KDE.) Perhaps, when E17 is finally released, E will become relevant again - I certainly hope so, because it looks like you guys are doing a lot of (quiet) work to make a kickass desktop environment. But it appears that the GNOME and KDE folks have a much more mature understanding about how to run large-scale projects on reasonable timetables to produce useful software in a timely manner.
If, as you say, the E community is happy with their place in the world, that's fine. But it's a bit hypocritical for raster to jump out and scoff at Seth's and Havoc's ideas when raster hasn't bothered to collaborate with any of them.