Sure, plenty of things do. You can get lower bandwidth than ICA still with things like Display PostScript and Java. And, in fact, there are even hacks that will take GUIs and expose them through HTML.
ICA is just one point on a continuum of choices for remote application display; it's tradeoffs are that it needs to take standard Windows applications and squeeze them through a low bandwidth pipe. X11, VNC, LBX, DXPC, etc., all make other kinds of tradeoffs.
Was plain old X11 even considered? If it was, and it didn't meet the criteria, then in what way was it found lacking? Too heavy for a 56k dialup connection?
You don't want to run plain X11 over dial-up--it wasn't designed for that. The X11 protocol was designed to be fast for local connections and fast networks. That's why X11 performs comparable to procedure-call APIs like those found in Windows for local graphics.
However, there are two X11-based protocols designed for dial-up: LBX and DXPC (check on Google). LBX most likely comes with your X server. Here's a simple example of how to use it:
Still putzy to use on a 10 mbit LAN for me... Alas.
Well, and it would be "putzy" on a 100mbit or 1Gbit LAN as well. VNC is slow on Windows out of the box because it has to guess about where screen updates occur--there is no official API. But, if you look around, there is a DLL that hooks drawing functions and makes VNC very fast even on Windows.
Open source doesnt necessarily mean "instant development".
What makes you think it ever meant that? GNU C and GNU C++ took years to catch up with the respective standards. Emacs 19 took so long to come out that it was a standing joke. So what? That's not the point. Open source software development is slow, but it's steady, and an open source software package keeps on living as long as it has users.
Just because you release something as open source, doesnt mean that thousands will flock and provide free development.
What makes you think open source has ever been about "flocking"? Many open source projects have tightly knit, small developer communities that you couldn't become a part of if you wanted to. They do their stuff at their own pace and share the results with others.
Of course, because Mozilla started out as a closed source project using "professional, industry-standard development practices" it really started out as much more of a mess than an equivalent open source project. And the extensive support for proprietary platforms like Windows and Macintosh also greatly complicates Mozilla. Konqueror is a much better example of open source at work, and it matured much faster than Mozilla.
Now that it has made some progress, it is more difficult for a closed-source company to compete with it.
Good. That will mean that we don't get the same madness we had with Netscape vs. IE, with each company out-featuring the other. I'm glad to see, actually, that Mozilla isn't rushing out to copy every misfeature IE has introduced.
It exists, and will be difficult to eliminate... There is no company to go out of business to cause Mozilla to disappear.
Yup, that's the whole point. Now, if only IE went away as well, we'd all be better off.
The most relevant fact in this whole discussion is that Mozilla still exists. If Netscape software had remained closed source, it would have disappeared with AOL's absorption of Netscape. Keeping software available long after the initial creators have disappeared is what open source is all about, and no matter what you may think of Mozilla technology, that makes Mozilla an unqualified open source success.
All software shall not and should not be free. Remember, a well-known government tried to use that model for all things, and it failed.
You are so confused. Things in the Soviet Union (which I assume you are referring to) were decidedly not free. Furthermore, just charging money for stuff doesn't create a market economy. If anything, Microsoft's dominance of the desktop software market is much closer to a centrally planned economy than a free market economy. Furthermore, a competitive market economy often ends up causing things to be free.
I very much wish we would get a market economy in software, but it doesn't look like it's going to happen any time soon.
Translation: I don't want to pay anyone for their hard work in putting together any piece of cross platform software.
I don't think that is what he was saying. But even if it was, the economic system in which you get paid for you hard work is called "communism". In a market economy, your "hard work" is worth only as much as people are willing to pay for it, in this case $0.
And given that there are plenty of free, web-based financial management offerings from banks, I suspect that this is what many people feel this package is worth.
What does that even mean? There aren't many applications that even run on the two platforms. Are you comparing OpenOffice and Mozilla on Windows to OpenOffice and Mozilla on Linux?
Well, independent of Knoppix, they run slower on Linux--not because there is anything wrong with Linux, but because both of them are based on cross-platform toolkits, which seem to have been primarily tuned and optimized for Windows and for the way Windows does things.
In short, yes. DVDs take up lots of space; being able to reduce that is good. Another reason is that DVDs go bad. And yet another is for people who live in multiple places.
However, I think a HD is less hassle than a bunch of DVDs, and almost as cheap.
The X-38, for example, is mostly about getting the crew back from the ISS in an emergency.
The Russians already have what looks like an acceptable return vehicle, why not use that?
The shuttle, on the other hand, is designed for manned missions, almost exclusively. It was designed for three main missions: sat. capture/recovery/repair, Spacelab-type missions, and space station construction. The ARD doesn't seem as close of a candidate for these types of missions (with the partial exception of Spacelab; LDEF seems right up its alley).
ARD is a return vehicle, not a launch vehicle. Presumably, the model is that they use Ariane and similar rockets for launching both cargo and astronauts and use something like the ARD to return astronauts from manned missions. If they need a vehicle to maneuver in orbit, presumably, they could launch that and keep it in orbit permanently.
That seems a lot more rational to me than the space shuttle, which is a single, heavy vehicle that is neither particularly efficient for maneuvering in space nor for landing.
Do you have information about ESA's design/mission criteria, and why Hermes was scrapped while ARD was kept?
I suspect it was money and politics, like everywhere. And it's the engineer's job to deliver systems that make it under such constraints.
We can talk about what Europe did and didn't do until we're blue in the face, but until we know why, we're just blowing hot air.
Trying to think through these things is not just "blowing hot air"; if you assume that ESA or NASA automatically make the right decisions, we could just ignore all of this.
It could be that ESA decided that they didn't need Hermes because the STS is around!
Are you kidding? Europe is trying to catch up with the US in terms of space, both unmanned and manned. They are going to push whatever technology lets them do that easiest, within their budgetary constraints.
I suspect the reason why Hermes was scrapped while the Shuttle is still flying is because the European companies have somewhat less political power to keep useless and costly programs, and they also have less motivation (because they will get their subsidies anyway).
So, the real question to me is: can you make a rational argument that the shuttle is actually a cost-effective way of getting to and from space? What purpose does the extra 100 tons of weight that make up the shuttle body relative to something like the ARD serve? Why do we keep paying so much to lift all that weight into orbit only to return it right away, if something much lighter would serve the purpose of providing a safe return just as well?
Err perhaps someone could explain to me what is better about openZaurus, I mean apart from knowing that nobody made any money out of writing the code why am i meant to think this a good thing?
For the same reason millions of people erase Windows from their machines and install Linux: the open source version works better.
Does it have a better version of mastermind? a better jpg viewer that might allow me to see large pictures direct off my digital camera in full screen mode
I believe all Zaurus distributions support screen rotations, including the X11-based one.
(can't rotate is a lame excuse, like what stops the thing just swapping X and Y coordinates on display).
What is "lame" is your understanding of how computer display hardware works. Screen rotation, although not terribly hard, is not just "swapping x and y coordinates".
The problem I have with my zaurus is that is does not work with my wireless card. Damn thing simply won't recognise my home network.
Well, gee, what about buying a compatible wireless card? If you buy one of the half dozen or so supported wireless cards, the setup is trivial and works like a charm. Or do you regularly buy Apple hardware and plug it into your PC as well?
How about Microsoft Bob?
Well, Microsoft Bob is clearly the OS for you. No, it hasn't been ported to Zaurus, but a PocketPC will give you a pretty good approximation of the experience.
If anything, this is proof that the politicians were right: our high labor costs are driving labor demand to other places.
Well, yes, obviously, duh. But you seem to think that that implies that we should lower our labor costs, for example by cutting benefits further, in order to remain competitive. I don't think so. Do you want to be paid like a worker in a developing nation and work under similar conditions?
I think we shouldn't lower labor costs. And, I think it is perfectly fine for the US to impose tariffs against countries whose environmental and labor regulations are less strict. At the same time, we should realize that we do not lead the world in labor and environmental standards and should stop complaining when other nations impose such tariffs on us.
So, you propose to use single-use vehicles to save on fuel?
Exactly. Return vehicles can be cheap and reliable if they are small, dumb, and Apollo/Soyuz-like. And, as the link shows, the Europeans scrapped Hermes and kept ARD--someone else seems to think it makes sense. And it's working for the Russians as well. Compare that with the enormous cost of each shuttle launch.
I gotta say, I'm glad you don't run CalTrans!
Space travel may be "public transportation", but, surprising as that may be to you, the cost structure differs significantly from trains and trolleys.
Among advanced nations, the US is engaged in a race to the bottom when it comes to working conditions, salaries, job security, and the environment. And for years, US politicians have made fun of Europeans because their labor costs were "too high".
Yet, when other countries get their labor costs to be lower than those of the US, then Americans start complaining and want to impose taxes. Well, which is it? If the US can impose tariffs on Indian computer products, is the US willing to have tariffs imposed on US computer products by Europeans, whose labor costs are higher because of better social services?
I think this Onion article points out what really is going on: many Americans just can't deal with the fact that the rest of the world is different and actually likes is that way.
In reality, Java has just as much a dynamic type system as PHP does.
No, in reality PHP lacks a static type system, while Java has one.
And, in reality, even the dynamic type information Java has is far from equivalent to PHP's, because in Java, the type of the object matters, while in PHP (and most other scripting and dynamic languages), only the behavior matters.
In short, in reality, the two type systems are very different.
Java has a static type system (compile-time type declarations). PHP5 presumably still has a purely dynamic type system (but the site isn't responding...).
develop something that works a lot better, a lot cheaper, and a lot more exciting.
Well, the Europeans seem to be looking at the past for inspiration. Apollo-style reentry vehicles are cheap and reliable. And I'm not sure whether they are exciting for you, but I suspect they are quite exciting for everybody on board.
that does not involve getting off the ground by blasting itself off the ground with hundreds of pounds of fuel.
Well, it just takes a certain amount of fuel to get stuff up there. However, the shuttle greatly compounds that problem by wasting half or more of the weight on just the same chunk of metal going up and down over and over again, only to give astronauts a much riskier ride.
Well, who can ever be sure. I didn't post the link because I'm reluctant to post links to potentially small university sites to Slashdot. But here is the link:
http://www.path.unimelb.edu.au/~dersch/
The path "/~dersch/" suggests that this is a UNIX system and that Dersch actually has an account. Creating an account would seem like unnecessary trouble to go through for simply mirroring a site. But, of course, it could just be a weird setup.
Well, a few seconds with Google show that he is alive and well, as are his tools, and they can be downloaded from a site at the University of Melbourne in Australia.
You know, anyone who thinks we bombed Iraq just to get the rebuilding contracts isn't gonna be satisfied no matter WHO gets the contract.
Who said anything about "just"? Obviously, the bombing of Iraq is multi-purpose, where liberation and the benefit of the Iraqi people play some small role as well.
And, no, other nations will not be completely satisfied by such a gesture, but it would help reverse a trend.
I'd see no reason to cater to the whims and fancies of adversarial entities. Keep the money in the US and let them grumble like the always do.
No, they haven't "always" done that. Germany used to follow the US without question, and so did Britain. France was quite friendly towards the US, even if at times they disagreed. After WWII, even most of the Arab countries were actually friendly towards the US.
This "grumbling" is a major change in US-European and US-Asian relations. And if the "grumbling" is followed, as seems increasingly likely, by loss of investment, loss of immigrants, and loss of influence in international bodies, the consequences for the US will be dire, because, ultimately, US wealth and power depend on foreign investments, trade, and trust.
If this is going to be US funded I thinks it's okay to favor US companies
In theory, I would agree. In practice, that approach leads to abuse. Think about it: politicians love to subsidize the companies of their big campaign contributors, but political realities don't let them do that. It's too suspicious if they just hand out cash, and besides, other countries would scream "illegal subsidies".
The US needs to scrupulously avoid the slightest suspicion at this point that this war is fought for economic reasons. And that means that the US should go out of its way to open up reconstruction contracts to non-US companies.
That's a hundred billion dollars plus of American taxpayer money, friend.
The largest fraction of that money goes to salaries and corporate profits. So, in effect, the money turns right around and gets spent on US companies and US workers. And that means that it is really just a gigantic subsidy of US industry and US workers. There is nothing wrong with that, Europe subsidizes as well, but let's not kid ourselves about what it means.
Money that we could spend on ourselves,
No, we couldn't. The US government is perpetually unwilling to increase spending substantially on domestic issues, like health care or education. If anybody had proposed adding $100bn for such programs, they would have been booed out of Congress as a "tax-and-spend" politician.
but that we're spending on Iraq instead for no other reason than because it's the right thing to do.
It may or may not be "a" right thing to do, but it is without a doubt one of the least useful things to spend $100bn on. With $100bn, the we could have saved millions of people overseas. Instead, we are bombing some third rate, irrelevant country back into the stone age.
This has nothing to do with "helping" anybody, it's simply a convenient gimmick for domestic political purposes: it feeds on US paranoia and xenophobia, it lets Bush funnel money to corporate donors, and it lets Bush distract folks from his abysmal record.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, plenty of things do. You can get lower bandwidth than ICA still with things like Display PostScript and Java. And, in fact, there are even hacks that will take GUIs and expose them through HTML.
ICA is just one point on a continuum of choices for remote application display; it's tradeoffs are that it needs to take standard Windows applications and squeeze them through a low bandwidth pipe. X11, VNC, LBX, DXPC, etc., all make other kinds of tradeoffs.
You don't want to run plain X11 over dial-up--it wasn't designed for that. The X11 protocol was designed to be fast for local connections and fast networks. That's why X11 performs comparable to procedure-call APIs like those found in Windows for local graphics.
However, there are two X11-based protocols designed for dial-up: LBX and DXPC (check on Google). LBX most likely comes with your X server. Here's a simple example of how to use it:
display-machine$ ssh -X remotehost
remote$ lbxproxy&
remote$ DISPLAY=:63
remote$ xterm&
Well, and it would be "putzy" on a 100mbit or 1Gbit LAN as well. VNC is slow on Windows out of the box because it has to guess about where screen updates occur--there is no official API. But, if you look around, there is a DLL that hooks drawing functions and makes VNC very fast even on Windows.
What makes you think it ever meant that? GNU C and GNU C++ took years to catch up with the respective standards. Emacs 19 took so long to come out that it was a standing joke. So what? That's not the point. Open source software development is slow, but it's steady, and an open source software package keeps on living as long as it has users.
Just because you release something as open source, doesnt mean that thousands will flock and provide free development.
What makes you think open source has ever been about "flocking"? Many open source projects have tightly knit, small developer communities that you couldn't become a part of if you wanted to. They do their stuff at their own pace and share the results with others.
Of course, because Mozilla started out as a closed source project using "professional, industry-standard development practices" it really started out as much more of a mess than an equivalent open source project. And the extensive support for proprietary platforms like Windows and Macintosh also greatly complicates Mozilla. Konqueror is a much better example of open source at work, and it matured much faster than Mozilla.
Now that it has made some progress, it is more difficult for a closed-source company to compete with it.
Good. That will mean that we don't get the same madness we had with Netscape vs. IE, with each company out-featuring the other. I'm glad to see, actually, that Mozilla isn't rushing out to copy every misfeature IE has introduced.
It exists, and will be difficult to eliminate... There is no company to go out of business to cause Mozilla to disappear.
Yup, that's the whole point. Now, if only IE went away as well, we'd all be better off.
The most relevant fact in this whole discussion is that Mozilla still exists. If Netscape software had remained closed source, it would have disappeared with AOL's absorption of Netscape. Keeping software available long after the initial creators have disappeared is what open source is all about, and no matter what you may think of Mozilla technology, that makes Mozilla an unqualified open source success.
You are so confused. Things in the Soviet Union (which I assume you are referring to) were decidedly not free. Furthermore, just charging money for stuff doesn't create a market economy. If anything, Microsoft's dominance of the desktop software market is much closer to a centrally planned economy than a free market economy. Furthermore, a competitive market economy often ends up causing things to be free.
I very much wish we would get a market economy in software, but it doesn't look like it's going to happen any time soon.
I don't think that is what he was saying. But even if it was, the economic system in which you get paid for you hard work is called "communism". In a market economy, your "hard work" is worth only as much as people are willing to pay for it, in this case $0.
And given that there are plenty of free, web-based financial management offerings from banks, I suspect that this is what many people feel this package is worth.
But the reverse isn't true: two entities can have identical DNA and still be distinct organisms--think identical twins.
Well, independent of Knoppix, they run slower on Linux--not because there is anything wrong with Linux, but because both of them are based on cross-platform toolkits, which seem to have been primarily tuned and optimized for Windows and for the way Windows does things.
Cebit is an international computer fair-the biggest in the world.
However, I think a HD is less hassle than a bunch of DVDs, and almost as cheap.
I think Digisette is/will be offering these.
The Russians already have what looks like an acceptable return vehicle, why not use that?
The shuttle, on the other hand, is designed for manned missions, almost exclusively. It was designed for three main missions: sat. capture/recovery/repair, Spacelab-type missions, and space station construction. The ARD doesn't seem as close of a candidate for these types of missions (with the partial exception of Spacelab; LDEF seems right up its alley).
ARD is a return vehicle, not a launch vehicle. Presumably, the model is that they use Ariane and similar rockets for launching both cargo and astronauts and use something like the ARD to return astronauts from manned missions. If they need a vehicle to maneuver in orbit, presumably, they could launch that and keep it in orbit permanently.
That seems a lot more rational to me than the space shuttle, which is a single, heavy vehicle that is neither particularly efficient for maneuvering in space nor for landing.
Do you have information about ESA's design/mission criteria, and why Hermes was scrapped while ARD was kept?
I suspect it was money and politics, like everywhere. And it's the engineer's job to deliver systems that make it under such constraints.
We can talk about what Europe did and didn't do until we're blue in the face, but until we know why, we're just blowing hot air.
Trying to think through these things is not just "blowing hot air"; if you assume that ESA or NASA automatically make the right decisions, we could just ignore all of this.
It could be that ESA decided that they didn't need Hermes because the STS is around!
Are you kidding? Europe is trying to catch up with the US in terms of space, both unmanned and manned. They are going to push whatever technology lets them do that easiest, within their budgetary constraints.
I suspect the reason why Hermes was scrapped while the Shuttle is still flying is because the European companies have somewhat less political power to keep useless and costly programs, and they also have less motivation (because they will get their subsidies anyway).
So, the real question to me is: can you make a rational argument that the shuttle is actually a cost-effective way of getting to and from space? What purpose does the extra 100 tons of weight that make up the shuttle body relative to something like the ARD serve? Why do we keep paying so much to lift all that weight into orbit only to return it right away, if something much lighter would serve the purpose of providing a safe return just as well?
For the same reason millions of people erase Windows from their machines and install Linux: the open source version works better.
Does it have a better version of mastermind? a better jpg viewer that might allow me to see large pictures direct off my digital camera in full screen mode
I believe all Zaurus distributions support screen rotations, including the X11-based one.
(can't rotate is a lame excuse, like what stops the thing just swapping X and Y coordinates on display).
What is "lame" is your understanding of how computer display hardware works. Screen rotation, although not terribly hard, is not just "swapping x and y coordinates".
The problem I have with my zaurus is that is does not work with my wireless card. Damn thing simply won't recognise my home network.
Well, gee, what about buying a compatible wireless card? If you buy one of the half dozen or so supported wireless cards, the setup is trivial and works like a charm. Or do you regularly buy Apple hardware and plug it into your PC as well?
How about Microsoft Bob?
Well, Microsoft Bob is clearly the OS for you. No, it hasn't been ported to Zaurus, but a PocketPC will give you a pretty good approximation of the experience.
Well, yes, obviously, duh. But you seem to think that that implies that we should lower our labor costs, for example by cutting benefits further, in order to remain competitive. I don't think so. Do you want to be paid like a worker in a developing nation and work under similar conditions?
I think we shouldn't lower labor costs. And, I think it is perfectly fine for the US to impose tariffs against countries whose environmental and labor regulations are less strict. At the same time, we should realize that we do not lead the world in labor and environmental standards and should stop complaining when other nations impose such tariffs on us.
Exactly. Return vehicles can be cheap and reliable if they are small, dumb, and Apollo/Soyuz-like. And, as the link shows, the Europeans scrapped Hermes and kept ARD--someone else seems to think it makes sense. And it's working for the Russians as well. Compare that with the enormous cost of each shuttle launch.
I gotta say, I'm glad you don't run CalTrans!
Space travel may be "public transportation", but, surprising as that may be to you, the cost structure differs significantly from trains and trolleys.
Yet, when other countries get their labor costs to be lower than those of the US, then Americans start complaining and want to impose taxes. Well, which is it? If the US can impose tariffs on Indian computer products, is the US willing to have tariffs imposed on US computer products by Europeans, whose labor costs are higher because of better social services?
I think this Onion article points out what really is going on: many Americans just can't deal with the fact that the rest of the world is different and actually likes is that way.
Sorry, that may have been a little too cryptic; to clarify: "in PHP only the behavior matters for substitutability".
No, in reality PHP lacks a static type system, while Java has one.
And, in reality, even the dynamic type information Java has is far from equivalent to PHP's, because in Java, the type of the object matters, while in PHP (and most other scripting and dynamic languages), only the behavior matters.
In short, in reality, the two type systems are very different.
Java has a static type system (compile-time type declarations). PHP5 presumably still has a purely dynamic type system (but the site isn't responding...).
Well, the Europeans seem to be looking at the past for inspiration. Apollo-style reentry vehicles are cheap and reliable. And I'm not sure whether they are exciting for you, but I suspect they are quite exciting for everybody on board.
that does not involve getting off the ground by blasting itself off the ground with hundreds of pounds of fuel.
Well, it just takes a certain amount of fuel to get stuff up there. However, the shuttle greatly compounds that problem by wasting half or more of the weight on just the same chunk of metal going up and down over and over again, only to give astronauts a much riskier ride.
http://www.path.unimelb.edu.au/~dersch/
The path "/~dersch/" suggests that this is a UNIX system and that Dersch actually has an account. Creating an account would seem like unnecessary trouble to go through for simply mirroring a site. But, of course, it could just be a weird setup.
Well, a few seconds with Google show that he is alive and well, as are his tools, and they can be downloaded from a site at the University of Melbourne in Australia.
Who said anything about "just"? Obviously, the bombing of Iraq is multi-purpose, where liberation and the benefit of the Iraqi people play some small role as well.
And, no, other nations will not be completely satisfied by such a gesture, but it would help reverse a trend.
I'd see no reason to cater to the whims and fancies of adversarial entities. Keep the money in the US and let them grumble like the always do.
No, they haven't "always" done that. Germany used to follow the US without question, and so did Britain. France was quite friendly towards the US, even if at times they disagreed. After WWII, even most of the Arab countries were actually friendly towards the US.
This "grumbling" is a major change in US-European and US-Asian relations. And if the "grumbling" is followed, as seems increasingly likely, by loss of investment, loss of immigrants, and loss of influence in international bodies, the consequences for the US will be dire, because, ultimately, US wealth and power depend on foreign investments, trade, and trust.
In theory, I would agree. In practice, that approach leads to abuse. Think about it: politicians love to subsidize the companies of their big campaign contributors, but political realities don't let them do that. It's too suspicious if they just hand out cash, and besides, other countries would scream "illegal subsidies".
The US needs to scrupulously avoid the slightest suspicion at this point that this war is fought for economic reasons. And that means that the US should go out of its way to open up reconstruction contracts to non-US companies.
The largest fraction of that money goes to salaries and corporate profits. So, in effect, the money turns right around and gets spent on US companies and US workers. And that means that it is really just a gigantic subsidy of US industry and US workers. There is nothing wrong with that, Europe subsidizes as well, but let's not kid ourselves about what it means.
Money that we could spend on ourselves,
No, we couldn't. The US government is perpetually unwilling to increase spending substantially on domestic issues, like health care or education. If anybody had proposed adding $100bn for such programs, they would have been booed out of Congress as a "tax-and-spend" politician.
but that we're spending on Iraq instead for no other reason than because it's the right thing to do.
It may or may not be "a" right thing to do, but it is without a doubt one of the least useful things to spend $100bn on. With $100bn, the we could have saved millions of people overseas. Instead, we are bombing some third rate, irrelevant country back into the stone age.
This has nothing to do with "helping" anybody, it's simply a convenient gimmick for domestic political purposes: it feeds on US paranoia and xenophobia, it lets Bush funnel money to corporate donors, and it lets Bush distract folks from his abysmal record.