Mozilla is the worst browser to run Flash plugins: it's crashing, it has problem wth sound, rendering and so on. Comparing to opera and MS IE. Besides, Flash works mostly on MS Windows and Mac OS. It's very crashy on Linux/x86. And you can forget about Linux on non-x86 platforms.
However, Mozilla has much better (potentially in some future) vector presentation technology: SVG. It's better integrated to HTML/Javascript code around it. And it's really platform independent.
I think that the day Microsoft buys Macromedia, Flash will dye for Mozilla and many Mozilla developers will switch to SVG. Which is much better than Flash.
the need to unify on a single, usable format (like XML) becomes critical
The only problem I see with SO/OO XML is that it's completely unindented and there is no XSL to convert it to anything readable. Ive made few hacks by myself, but it would be nice if Sun will supply some XSL to convert to/from another XML formats.
I keep the same instance of OpenOffice in memory by opening new files and closing exisiting ones for weeks on both Linux and Windows boxes. No crashes so far, no memory leak.
What is really bad is MS-Word file format support. When I have OO Writer file of 100K and export it to MS Word doc format I get 20M. That export has certainly a bug somewhere.
BSD is dying: not popular; not enough of critical mass in the user base to attract new users; ignored by commercial vendors;
FreeBSD not really mutliplatform: Mac OS X is not FreeBSD, they just share few utils and tools; you cannot install FreeBSD exactly same way on x86, PPC and Sparc and have the same (99%) set of applications and same stability;
BSD was traditionally for servers: there is no such thing as BSD desktop geeks;
FreeBSD is technically only for small servers: cluster and SMP support is either week or unstable; commercial cluster vendors ignore BSD;
Linux, especially Gentoo:
Gentoo is the most prospective free OS: the best of FreeBSD (Portage is like ports but even better); the best of Linux (many drivers out of the box); attractive for already "poisoned" by Linux IT managers;
Linux, especially Gentoo, is really multi-platform: Linux kernel is multiplatform; Gentoo Portage even improves it (architecture keywords, CFLAGS); insalls and works exactly same (99%) way on x86, PPC and Sparc;
Linux is desktop enhanced: there are many Linux desktop geeks playing with DVD, video cameras, TV/FM tuners and so on;
Linux has a "big server" support: SMP and clusters are already stable; commercial vendors love Linux for clusters;
Now, the question is: where would you invest your money (if you have one), your skills (if you have one) and your effort time (if you have one)?
In United Arab Emirates, if you are on work permit visa (and 75% of people are on it) and dye, your dead body must be sent to your original country on expense of your visa sponsor. Who often (depends on contract conditions) will charge your family.
Welcome to Gentoo PPC and other Power Pinguin mail-lists and forums. You'll get many interesting facts about Macs without any brain-wasing ads. Most (if not all) those people installed Linux PPC after they've been disappointed with Mac OS (both 9 and X).
Many of them still use Mac OS from time to time in dual boot or in MOL (Mac-On-Linux aka vmware) - there are still situations when we need some unported program or driver. Day to day less and less often.
Got a point? People choose Linux after realizing that they threw a big chunk of many to the window of proprietary hardware.
Well, after all it's not that bad. Especially when it runs Linux:)
That's for Windows and Mac users, chemically grown brain-less human bodies.
Linux users love Lynx - no ads scripts, no stupid graphics, no annoying noises. And no problems with codecs. If you want to listen music - go to the concert performance. If you want to watch the movie - go to the movie theater. That's the only organically grown way to consume multimedia.
I thought that Netscape started off as a combination of open source (though not GPL, of course) projects. I'm fairly certain that this is true, though I can't quite remember the name. Mostik? Not quite...
Mosaic was the name of the first web browser, which source code was open, and which source code has been used by Netscape to create their first commercial (but yet available to download for free) close-source browser. Check it here and here and here and here.
That was my first web browser to use. It worked fine on both X11 and Win 3.1, a bit slow, like Mozilla on modern computers. By the way, it has some graphics before Netscape.
You cannot force international spammers to pay the fine. And you cannot force them to have a caller ID either. Unless you are ready to treat such way other goverments on behalf of their spamming residents. Or unless you are ready to disconnect whole countries from USA. Or unless you are able to change international laws for convinience of US citizens...
I knew that only moroons are working in the govt of the country #1, but I did not know that THAT moroons.
now I am getting into Zen philosophy so I will jsut shut up becasue I don't know where this is leading towards
For those of you who don't afraid of where this is leading towards, here are some interesting links between buddhism and fundamental phisics.
Quantum sunyata: Basically, what quantum theory says is that fundamental particles are empty of inherent existence and exist in an undefined state of potentialities. They have no inherent existence from their own side and do not become 'real' until a mind interacts with them and gives them meaning. Whenever and wherever there is no mind there is no meaning and no reality. This is a similar conclusion to the Mahayana Buddhist teachings on sunyata.
Sunyata - the emptiness of all things: It is important to emphasise that the mathematical equations of quantum physics do not describe actual existence - they describe potential for existence. Working out the equations of quantum mechanics for a system composed of fundamental particles produces a range of potential locations, values and attributes of the particles which evolve and change with time. But for any system only one of these potential states can become real, and - this is the revolutionary finding of quantum physics - what forces the range of the potentials to assume one value is the act of observation. Matter and energy are not in themselves phenomena, and do not become phenomena until they interact with the mind.
Buddhism copes with Science: "If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism." -- Albert Einstein
A cosmic religion: "The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description." --- Albert Einstein
About buddhism: "Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in the cosmic religion for the future: It trancends a personal God, avoids dogma and theology; it covers both the natural and the spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity." --- Albert Einstein.
My favorite quote of Albert Einstein: "Imagination is more important than knowledge".
I think that the file folder structure is obsolete. Hierarchy does not describe well the real world. That's why we use symbolic links. However symbolic links have lots of limitations.
What if I want to swap a symbolic link with the primary inode? What if I want to inherit many custom-defined attributes? What if I want a multiple inheritance - several equal parent folders, not just a parent with second-class s-links?
I agree with the prediction about taxonomies and knowledge maps.
It's not clear how the article counts touchscreens - as a mouse devise or not. If not then keyboard + mouse will give less than 95% (probably 75%), if yes then most of input (99%) will go through keyboard+ mouse (including touchscreen).
Of course, touchscreens by that time will be supplied with accurate handwriting recognition algorithms, which already exist, but still not that accurate and not so popular (touchscreens will help to popularize handwriting recognition).
Personally I'd like to have touchscreen at my home computers, but not for that price. Besides, I work in Linux and I did not find any working implementation of handwriting recognition for Linux. Any help with links?
JBuilder has a cousin. Oracle's JDeveloper! Oracle licensed JBuilder code from Borland and started a separate branch in the late 1990s. It is a very good IDE. And yes, its free for "personal" use and it works on Linux.
Oracle JDeveloper is not very good IDE. I know several development teams who bought JDeveloper license, tried to use it, and then switched to Together, Eclipse or even Netbeans.
Oracle JDeveloper is good only for novices, who wants to creat own first Java applicatin, and Oracle database is a part of it. I don't know any commercial Java application developed in JDeveloper up to the QA point.
I am a Java programmer myself (laugh it up), but Swing just plain annoys me.
I have to program on Java from time to time as well, but usually I use high-order languages, like Python and Lisp. Well, whole Java annoys me. Swing and EJB are both the best illustration of how to sell bad technologies through non-technical managers.
I think with death of Borland (that's the goal of Microsoft deal, isn't it?) the chances of Java to survive will be less, while chances for better languages of new generation (read: functional and logical programming languages) to come to the market will be bigger. I wonder (but won't be surprised) if Microsoft will start sell some of them.
You are right. Nothing's there. I've asked the question about applications on other forums and the best answer I've got: MorphOS runs most of the Amiga software. There are over 25,000 amiga titles out there. Trust me, you won't feel the "lack of applications".
Hmm, I guess those people used to count files, rather then features. But I see something positive in Morphos and Beos. At least now when someone points to Linux and calls it a geek factor we can answer: Linux is not a geek factor, it's a real OS with real applications for real business tasks. Beos and Morphos are a geek factor. Personally, I think that Macosx is also a geek factor, just very professional and proprietary one. (here is more about geeks)
As for freeware (GPL and BSDL) applications, many of them are still in a geek stage. But other many have already achived a very good level of stability and usefulness (especially, when they are designed and developed, not just evolved). Today I cannot imagine my work without (X)emacs, GCC, Apache, Python, GIMP, OpenOffice, Mozilla and other applications doing real-world tasks. And that is exactly we are looking in any new desktop OS we are introduces.
Can it do it? Not yet? Never will? Don't bother me again.
MacOSX works on PPC well, just slow a bit. But it is not BSD, it's claimed by Apple that it is BSD, but it is not. BSD has a monolitic kernel. Macosx has a microkernel. That makes them very different. Macosx shares some of BSD utils, but who doesn't? Most of commercial proprietary unices do, they just don't claim themselves BSD.
Real BSD's doesn't work on PPC well and stable. Iv'e tried them myself. That was a good experience, but that was not I want on my desktop on a daily basis.
MkLinux is obsolete and really used today only for embedded devices as a basis for proprietary OS. It is not a desktop OS to use today.
Linux/PPC is presented by at least six good distros: Gentoo, YDL, Debian, Suse, Mandrake, Slackware. I've tried all of them and I can recommend YDL for home novices, while Gentoo for developers, admins and for IT dept corporate distribution.
BeOS has the same problem as I can percieve with Morphos - lack of real world applications. If you use it then be prepared that you'll have a problem in file sharing with other people (office docs). And be prepared that half of you favorite development tools, compiler, interpreters and libriries will not work as you expect or won't work at all. That was the reason why OS/2 has died.
I estimate that Baykonur Cosmodrome hires less than 0.01% of Russian engineers working on various space programs all over the place from Europe to Far East. Most of them work in Siberia.
Cosmodrome is the fastest way to burn money (fuel), Institutes and Manufacturing Plants is very slow way to do that (brains are cheapper than fuel):)
Besides, Baikonur is not the only Russian Cosmodrome. Plesetsk is another one.
Finally, due to political reasons and/or due to the location reasons (Kazakhstan is still far away from the equator) Russia plans to move Baikonur lounch pad business to the equatorial part of Pacific ocean. There are some plans about a joint venture project with Australia and/or other countries.
All facts I know are from public russian sources. Don't call CIA - they should already know it:) CIA doesn't update/complete their World Fuckedbook just by political reasons - the Cold War is far from being over, it's just not for publicity now:(
I guess DB/2. IBM has just bought Informix and there is a rumor about IBM's support for PostrgeSQL (which shares some history with Informix Illustra, BTW).
I might be wrong - IBM is still pushing DB/2 hard, even to open source hosting facilities and even by killing PostgreSQL installations. But is this what IBM tried with OS/2 before? It didn't safe OS/2 and that's why I think that DB/2 will be next.
The article touches on the fact that their annual funding is about 309 million versus the U.S. budget of 15 billion.
The article doesn't touch the fact that space engineers in Russia (not in Moscow - in real Russia, where most of space programs are located) have $309 of monthly salary, compared to $15,000 in US. That makes them even in terms of working hours contributed to the project.
How about a machine with a 250Mhz IBM PowerPC, 2 SmartCard readers, one CompactFlash slot, UDMA66 IDE, MPEG2 support with MPEG4 (DivX) support on the way, Ethernet, LCD display, SPDIF out, yada yada yada (zipped User's Manual). Oh, and it is built specifically to run Linux. Available right now.
Long time ago Microsoft abandoned non-x86 platforms. Now we'll see how they would like one more market sector with computers which cannot run Windows.
---
Home without Windows - the prison cage? No! It's a world without walls!
Slashdot Mirror
However, Mozilla has much better (potentially in some future) vector presentation technology: SVG. It's better integrated to HTML/Javascript code around it. And it's really platform independent.
I think that the day Microsoft buys Macromedia, Flash will dye for Mozilla and many Mozilla developers will switch to SVG. Which is much better than Flash.
I think there should be three tabs instead of one 'Audio' one:
The only problem I see with SO/OO XML is that it's completely unindented and there is no XSL to convert it to anything readable. Ive made few hacks by myself, but it would be nice if Sun will supply some XSL to convert to/from another XML formats.
What is really bad is MS-Word file format support. When I have OO Writer file of 100K and export it to MS Word doc format I get 20M. That export has certainly a bug somewhere.
- BSD is dying: not popular; not enough of critical mass in the user base to attract new users; ignored by commercial vendors;
- FreeBSD not really mutliplatform: Mac OS X is not FreeBSD, they just share few utils and tools; you cannot install FreeBSD exactly same way on x86, PPC and Sparc and have the same (99%) set of applications and same stability;
- BSD was traditionally for servers: there is no such thing as BSD desktop geeks;
- FreeBSD is technically only for small servers: cluster and SMP support is either week or unstable; commercial cluster vendors ignore BSD;
Linux, especially Gentoo:- Gentoo is the most prospective free OS: the best of FreeBSD (Portage is like ports but even better); the best of Linux (many drivers out of the box); attractive for already "poisoned" by Linux IT managers;
- Linux, especially Gentoo, is really multi-platform: Linux kernel is multiplatform; Gentoo Portage even improves it (architecture keywords, CFLAGS); insalls and works exactly same (99%) way on x86, PPC and Sparc;
- Linux is desktop enhanced: there are many Linux desktop geeks playing with DVD, video cameras, TV/FM tuners and so on;
- Linux has a "big server" support: SMP and clusters are already stable; commercial vendors love Linux for clusters;
Now, the question is: where would you invest your money (if you have one), your skills (if you have one) and your effort time (if you have one)?In United Arab Emirates, if you are on work permit visa (and 75% of people are on it) and dye, your dead body must be sent to your original country on expense of your visa sponsor. Who often (depends on contract conditions) will charge your family.
Many of them still use Mac OS from time to time in dual boot or in MOL (Mac-On-Linux aka vmware) - there are still situations when we need some unported program or driver. Day to day less and less often.
Got a point? People choose Linux after realizing that they threw a big chunk of many to the window of proprietary hardware.
Well, after all it's not that bad. Especially when it runs Linux :)
That's certainly a downside! :)
Linux users love Lynx - no ads scripts, no stupid graphics, no annoying noises. And no problems with codecs. If you want to listen music - go to the concert performance. If you want to watch the movie - go to the movie theater. That's the only organically grown way to consume multimedia.
Now, mod me up! What are you waiting for?!?
Mosaic was the name of the first web browser, which source code was open, and which source code has been used by Netscape to create their first commercial (but yet available to download for free) close-source browser. Check it here and here and here and here.
That was my first web browser to use. It worked fine on both X11 and Win 3.1, a bit slow, like Mozilla on modern computers. By the way, it has some graphics before Netscape.
I knew that only moroons are working in the govt of the country #1, but I did not know that THAT moroons.
For those of you who don't afraid of where this is leading towards, here are some interesting links between buddhism and fundamental phisics.
Quantum sunyata: Basically, what quantum theory says is that fundamental particles are empty of inherent existence and exist in an undefined state of potentialities. They have no inherent existence from their own side and do not become 'real' until a mind interacts with them and gives them meaning. Whenever and wherever there is no mind there is no meaning and no reality. This is a similar conclusion to the Mahayana Buddhist teachings on sunyata.
Sunyata - the emptiness of all things: It is important to emphasise that the mathematical equations of quantum physics do not describe actual existence - they describe potential for existence. Working out the equations of quantum mechanics for a system composed of fundamental particles produces a range of potential locations, values and attributes of the particles which evolve and change with time. But for any system only one of these potential states can become real, and - this is the revolutionary finding of quantum physics - what forces the range of the potentials to assume one value is the act of observation. Matter and energy are not in themselves phenomena, and do not become phenomena until they interact with the mind.
Buddhism copes with Science: "If there is any religion that would cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism." -- Albert Einstein
A cosmic religion: "The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend a personal God and avoid dogmas and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description." --- Albert Einstein
About buddhism: "Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in the cosmic religion for the future: It trancends a personal God, avoids dogma and theology; it covers both the natural and the spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity." --- Albert Einstein.
My favorite quote of Albert Einstein: "Imagination is more important than knowledge".
What if I want to swap a symbolic link with the primary inode? What if I want to inherit many custom-defined attributes? What if I want a multiple inheritance - several equal parent folders, not just a parent with second-class s-links?
I agree with the prediction about taxonomies and knowledge maps.
Of course, touchscreens by that time will be supplied with accurate handwriting recognition algorithms, which already exist, but still not that accurate and not so popular (touchscreens will help to popularize handwriting recognition).
Personally I'd like to have touchscreen at my home computers, but not for that price. Besides, I work in Linux and I did not find any working implementation of handwriting recognition for Linux. Any help with links?
I see such MySQL responses on slashdotted sites a lot. Why don't I see any PostgreSQL signatures on any slashdoted sites?
Oracle JDeveloper is not very good IDE. I know several development teams who bought JDeveloper license, tried to use it, and then switched to Together, Eclipse or even Netbeans.
Oracle JDeveloper is good only for novices, who wants to creat own first Java applicatin, and Oracle database is a part of it. I don't know any commercial Java application developed in JDeveloper up to the QA point.
I have to program on Java from time to time as well, but usually I use high-order languages, like Python and Lisp. Well, whole Java annoys me. Swing and EJB are both the best illustration of how to sell bad technologies through non-technical managers.
I think with death of Borland (that's the goal of Microsoft deal, isn't it?) the chances of Java to survive will be less, while chances for better languages of new generation (read: functional and logical programming languages) to come to the market will be bigger. I wonder (but won't be surprised) if Microsoft will start sell some of them.
Hmm, I guess those people used to count files, rather then features. But I see something positive in Morphos and Beos. At least now when someone points to Linux and calls it a geek factor we can answer: Linux is not a geek factor, it's a real OS with real applications for real business tasks. Beos and Morphos are a geek factor. Personally, I think that Macosx is also a geek factor, just very professional and proprietary one. (here is more about geeks)
As for freeware (GPL and BSDL) applications, many of them are still in a geek stage. But other many have already achived a very good level of stability and usefulness (especially, when they are designed and developed, not just evolved). Today I cannot imagine my work without (X)emacs, GCC, Apache, Python, GIMP, OpenOffice, Mozilla and other applications doing real-world tasks. And that is exactly we are looking in any new desktop OS we are introduces.
Can it do it? Not yet? Never will? Don't bother me again.
Real BSD's doesn't work on PPC well and stable. Iv'e tried them myself. That was a good experience, but that was not I want on my desktop on a daily basis.
MkLinux is obsolete and really used today only for embedded devices as a basis for proprietary OS. It is not a desktop OS to use today.
Linux/PPC is presented by at least six good distros: Gentoo, YDL, Debian, Suse, Mandrake, Slackware. I've tried all of them and I can recommend YDL for home novices, while Gentoo for developers, admins and for IT dept corporate distribution.
BeOS has the same problem as I can percieve with Morphos - lack of real world applications. If you use it then be prepared that you'll have a problem in file sharing with other people (office docs). And be prepared that half of you favorite development tools, compiler, interpreters and libriries will not work as you expect or won't work at all. That was the reason why OS/2 has died.
Cosmodrome is the fastest way to burn money (fuel), Institutes and Manufacturing Plants is very slow way to do that (brains are cheapper than fuel) :)
Besides, Baikonur is not the only Russian Cosmodrome. Plesetsk is another one.
Finally, due to political reasons and/or due to the location reasons (Kazakhstan is still far away from the equator) Russia plans to move Baikonur lounch pad business to the equatorial part of Pacific ocean. There are some plans about a joint venture project with Australia and/or other countries.
All facts I know are from public russian sources. Don't call CIA - they should already know it :) CIA doesn't update/complete their World Fuckedbook just by political reasons - the Cold War is far from being over, it's just not for publicity now :(
I might be wrong - IBM is still pushing DB/2 hard, even to open source hosting facilities and even by killing PostgreSQL installations. But is this what IBM tried with OS/2 before? It didn't safe OS/2 and that's why I think that DB/2 will be next.
The article doesn't touch the fact that space engineers in Russia (not in Moscow - in real Russia, where most of space programs are located) have $309 of monthly salary, compared to $15,000 in US. That makes them even in terms of working hours contributed to the project.
Long time ago Microsoft abandoned non-x86 platforms. Now we'll see how they would like one more market sector with computers which cannot run Windows.
---
Home without Windows - the prison cage? No! It's a world without walls!
Don't worry about people in America - the Big Brother takes care of them.