One reason for people's apathy could be that the actual "Programmer's Day" is Oct 31st, also known as Programmer's X-mas because, as you're all aware, 31 Oct == 25 Dec. This has been celebrated in Sweden for a long time, since the 18th century in fact, and considered so important that Oct 31st is Edit's name day[1].
If you think for a moment you will be able to control what games your kids will be playing, you probably either live alone in the desert with no other kids within 100 miles, or you're just not a parent yet and still think you can control these things.
Take it from me, been a gamer since the Atari 2600 was new. I have two kids. I thought I'd influence my son with my interest in games. However, I had a brutal awakening. My son started playing Angry Birds when he was 3. Because his (older) kindergarden friends were . Oh sure, we've done the occasional de-tour into classicaly inspired games like New Super Mario Bros, but in general, he plays what his friends are playing and if I don't let him play that, he'll go play with his LEGOs instead. Daddy can keep his strange old games.
iTunes is treating the world outside the US like an unwanted stepchild. Many of the records that are available in the US shop and which are available on CD here in Europe cannot be bought from the iTunes Store. So, what do they expect me to do? I bought a lot of music from iTunes when the store came to Sweden in the first place, but when even such main stream things as a Disney soundtrack isn't available outside the US, it is no wonder people are heading back to the torrent sites (or record stores for that matter).
The majority of closed source is now disguised as Web Applications
That is actually one of the more insightful comments I've read in a while. I think the reason most people "forget" about this is because many of them work excellently from a Linux based machine running Firefox and they rarely cost anything to use. In fact, I feel that the whole free-as-in-speach argument win very few private users compared to the free-as-in-beer-and-works-on-my-free-OS.
Also, what about free data? Even if you use free-as-in-speach software, what about free data? This seems to be much more of a controversy these days of web hosted services.
I think it likely that a race that can devote enough resources to exploring interstellar space will already have settled most of their domestic disputes, which more or less implies that they subscribe to a strong common set of values, e.g. some sort of "religion" (I use the term loosely).
If they come here and see us squabbling over the meager resources of our planet, I think it more likely that they would want to convert us to their views than the opposite.
I think the same argument applies to us. If we don't stop fighting amonst ourselves, we won't ever get anywhere with our space exploration. As long as most resources are tied up in military programs, space will have to wait. Getting to the Moon is nice and all, but the travels will get increasingly expensive as we try to get outside of our own solarsystem.
On the other hand, I believe in the "wisdom" of Star Trek - First Contact, if we ever encounter another race, people are probably going to be so scared that many Earthly conflicts will be set aside.
...then I'd worry. Perhaps reporting the rise of Linux on Slashdot is a bit like preaching to the quire, but I think there are several good reasons for doing it:
1) Mentioning how great their products will be and how many are already adopting the technology (even though it isn't finished yet) is one of Microsofts many marketing tricks and one that I'd say have helped them along. Why not learn from them?
2) Making a change in something as set as the desktop OS market requires substantial momentum and, as your post implied, RH couldn't do it, SuSE hasn't been able to do it but that doesn't mean it can't be done. It's all in the numbers and if the Linux community stops announcing all the (more or less) serious attempts, how will we know somebody is trying? How will we find new partners to colaborate with?
The first article mentioning "Desktop Linux on the Rise" was news, the second perhaps a bit less so and this one maybe not at all, but the increasing occurence of such articles is news in itself.
How about it? It's good enough for Apple and it's easily integrated with existing C and C++ code.
And personally, it think it's sort of UN*X-ish in it's attitude. The way you can fiddle with messages almost makes you feel like playing with a UN*X-installation as root.
Time somebody did some harn back. All these companies, organizations and governments rely on software to help them, can't we hurt them back?
Let's stop giving them their software on digital media (as apparently it can only be used for illegal distribution of copyrighted media) and hand them their applications printed on paper.
I'm a regular Linux user and have been since 1994 but for the first time I'm considering switching my fav os for something else, MacOS X. Why? BETTER apps. Not more, not freer, not more open source, but better, more thought through applications (and that includes the GUI).
I think Nautilus is swell and the whole GNOME desktop is a great accomplishment for the open source community, but it's nowhere near the refinement of the MacOS GUI. The diffrences are not obvious right away since most people will just try to use the GUI as they would use Windows or GNOME. This will yield a working GUI, but you need to understand the MacOS philosophy in much the same manner as you must understand the terminal in order to get any effective work done. When you do, there is no turning back.
Oh, another thing: cut-and-paste, drag-n-drop, hardware acceleration, plug-and-play, third party driver support... those are working concepts in MacOS X. I miss that in Linux.
"The worst I have to do is come in in the morning, sit there for 3 minutes while the patches install, and do a quick reboot. It's a hell of a lot easier than finding out there's a new OpenSSL exploit and having to recompile (or download RPM's) for everything that I think might use OpenSSL."
And the worst I have to do is to click "update all" in my Red Capet (the update application that goes with Ximian Desktop) and then NOT reboot.
Seriously, if you're going to argue that things are easier in Windows just because you don't have to care, make sure you know how things actually work in the Linux realm.
As long as there is software there will be bugs, no matter where it is run.
I'm not so sure. Lots of errors are introduced simply because programmers write too much new code. Programmering as it is done today is not a branch of engineering, its a craft. One way to industrialize programming would be to go the same way as say civil engineering.
A civil engineer doesn't design new building elements each time she designs a new structure. Buildings and bridges are constructed from standardized elements with known characteristics and which can be manufactured efficiantly and with high quality.
Doing the same in programming would perhaps be along the lines of using higher level languages for application development, using real, standardized component frameworks with immutable components and perhaps use a bit of computer science and make (mathematically) sure that what we do will work.
All this will limit the flexibility that e.g. coding everything from scratch in C will give, but it could also help reducing the number of defects in common software. Bottom line is: if we want to be an industry, we better start behaving like one!
It's interesting to find that most comments thus far has been about the name of the app. Is there really no more to say or are people just looking for cheap Funny-karma?
I'll chip in for the ante then: This seems to be an intreresting product for hybrid companies (like I've worked with) where the engineering part is using Linux and the manager part is using Windows/Outlook. This way there is a serious player for interconnecting the two of them that (unlike Evolution) doesn't rely on an Exchange server. If now Evolution just could start working with this as well and we'll have real interconnectivity. Good.
"Why does America deserve to have all the wealth that it has? "
because we deloped global capitalism.
Er... so you're claiming some sort of patent/copyright ownership here? Perhaps it's time for you to start paying the chineese/indians/persians/arabs/romans/greek for developing the alphabet, maths and philosophy and logic.
I think you're right. More specifically, I'd like to point out the role of parents and schools. Biologically, we're not designed to be free until we're adults. Nature traded out inherited reflexes and instincts for flexibility, relying instead on the family structure for teaching the young what they need to function.
One thing that seems to be missing from today's curicculums is "society-skills". That's not social skills, but insted what you need to know in order to function in a society. We form societies in order to make it easier to provide specialized services (medical care, high-education, social wellfare, militay etc), but in order to society to work, people must work with it, not against it.
That's not saying you shouldn't critizise it, but there are acceptable (democratic) ways of doing that which will not disrupt its primary functions: providing stability and freedom to persue your goals.
I once heard a metaphore that I think applies to this situation: If you stand with your feet in sand, there's going to be footsteps when you leave. However, it's not until you leave that your footsteps can be erased.
For a company like Blizzard, this can mean two things: 1) They have a working learning organization that is not dependant on star players or heros. In this case, younger talent will grow to take the place of the older and the company will evolve.
2) They (like 90% of the software business) has never gotten around to create a real engineering process, and as such is dependant on specific persons. In this case, the success will follow the talent and Blizzard will be deminished by this loss.
From what I can tell about Blizzard from playing their games, I think they are closer to alternative 1. One can see a steady refinement of their game ideas from the first War Craft up to WCIII. I believe they will be affected by the loss of talent, but it increases the chances of seeing new and innovative ideas in their future games.
Linux is excellent as a research OS, for when you need a tool for a completely new environment but don't want to start over. In this segment, Linux will prevail, I am sure, only to be matched by perhaps other free/open kernels.
I don't believe this to be true for the desktop.
You can learn any tool, provided it is not crafted by an idiot. The MacOS Desktop is an excellently crafted tool and no matter of choice or configurability can match the quality of the GUI design, unless you have as much GUI design experience as the professionals at Apple. Unless the open desktops (GNOME, KDE etc) gains an equally strong (and competent) guiding force in the GUI dept, it will never measure up to neither Windows nor MacOS.
After the merging of MacOS and UN*X, I just can't say much in favour of other OSs. Unfortunately, I'm poor and as such, I'll have to stay with my free desktop until I get a job.
Even though I find the proposal a bit odd, I can't really see it as something that limits free speach. You can still say anything you like.
I'm not sure how this would help the large company much, they usually have their own media machine where they can publish anything they want. It does however give the small person or company a chance to refute slander published by larger companies.
Really, wouldn't it be nice to have Microsoft publish answers to some of their silly statements about Linux companies on Microsoft's own site?
Would that be practical? Imagine a global phone number system, where the number wasn't tied to your geographical location. It would have to be a lot of digits and you couldn't reduce it due to being in the same region or country. How is that an improvement?
Considering many people today just enter a number into their the phone book of the mobile phone and never again see the actual digits, I think a system where you could register a logical name (something similar to an url) and have that automatically translated by the phone system to your current phone number (just like a DNS) would be more useful.
People don't like codes. We like logical names. Few surf the net using IP numbers, most use litteral urls. If I write a letter, I want to be able to figure out the adress from what I know of the recipient.
The postal office on the other hand, would probably go for this as it would reduce the time and cost to handle a letter or a package. Even if it is by a second/letter, it will make a big difference. However, unless they seriously reduce the postage, I'm never gona spend time looking up weird codes, they'll have to do that themselves.
Now, all this is very interesting, but personally, I do hope that snailmail will go away and be (for most things) replaced by electronic mail, which is faster, cheaper, healthier for the environment and, used correctly, more secure too.
Slashdot Mirror
One reason for people's apathy could be that the actual "Programmer's Day" is Oct 31st, also known as Programmer's X-mas because, as you're all aware, 31 Oct == 25 Dec. This has been celebrated in Sweden for a long time, since the 18th century in fact, and considered so important that Oct 31st is Edit's name day[1].
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedish_name_day_list_of_2001
If you think for a moment you will be able to control what games your kids will be playing, you probably either live alone in the desert with no other kids within 100 miles, or you're just not a parent yet and still think you can control these things.
Take it from me, been a gamer since the Atari 2600 was new. I have two kids. I thought I'd influence my son with my interest in games. However, I had a brutal awakening. My son started playing Angry Birds when he was 3. Because his (older) kindergarden friends were . Oh sure, we've done the occasional de-tour into classicaly inspired games like New Super Mario Bros, but in general, he plays what his friends are playing and if I don't let him play that, he'll go play with his LEGOs instead. Daddy can keep his strange old games.
We already have Programmer's X-Mas, which of course is on Oct 31.
iTunes is treating the world outside the US like an unwanted stepchild. Many of the records that are available in the US shop and which are available on CD here in Europe cannot be bought from the iTunes Store. So, what do they expect me to do? I bought a lot of music from iTunes when the store came to Sweden in the first place, but when even such main stream things as a Disney soundtrack isn't available outside the US, it is no wonder people are heading back to the torrent sites (or record stores for that matter).
... or is that no longer necessary?
Why do you assume women would like only titles like these? My wife and I play co-op 3d shooters a lot and that's a lot of fun.
Seriously, if you're in a relationship where you have to give up one of your main hobbies, maybe it's the relationship that is wrong.
Me and my wife share almost all our major pasttimes, that way, we don't have to give up anything for the other.
I think it likely that a race that can devote enough resources to exploring interstellar space will already have settled most of their domestic disputes, which more or less implies that they subscribe to a strong common set of values, e.g. some sort of "religion" (I use the term loosely).
If they come here and see us squabbling over the meager resources of our planet, I think it more likely that they would want to convert us to their views than the opposite.
I think the same argument applies to us. If we don't stop fighting amonst ourselves, we won't ever get anywhere with our space exploration. As long as most resources are tied up in military programs, space will have to wait. Getting to the Moon is nice and all, but the travels will get increasingly expensive as we try to get outside of our own solarsystem.
On the other hand, I believe in the "wisdom" of Star Trek - First Contact, if we ever encounter another race, people are probably going to be so scared that many Earthly conflicts will be set aside.
...then I'd worry. Perhaps reporting the rise of Linux on Slashdot is a bit like preaching to the quire, but I think there are several good reasons for doing it:
1) Mentioning how great their products will be and how many are already adopting the technology (even though it isn't finished yet) is one of Microsofts many marketing tricks and one that I'd say have helped them along. Why not learn from them?
2) Making a change in something as set as the desktop OS market requires substantial momentum and, as your post implied, RH couldn't do it, SuSE hasn't been able to do it but that doesn't mean it can't be done. It's all in the numbers and if the Linux community stops announcing all the (more or less) serious attempts, how will we know somebody is trying? How will we find new partners to colaborate with?
The first article mentioning "Desktop Linux on the Rise" was news, the second perhaps a bit less so and this one maybe not at all, but the increasing occurence of such articles is news in itself.
How about it? It's good enough for Apple and it's easily integrated with existing C and C++ code.
And personally, it think it's sort of UN*X-ish in it's attitude. The way you can fiddle with messages almost makes you feel like playing with a UN*X-installation as root.
Time somebody did some harn back. All these companies, organizations and governments rely on software to help them, can't we hurt them back?
Let's stop giving them their software on digital media (as apparently it can only be used for illegal distribution of copyrighted media) and hand them their applications printed on paper.
I'm a regular Linux user and have been since 1994 but for the first time I'm considering switching my fav os for something else, MacOS X. Why? BETTER apps. Not more, not freer, not more open source, but better, more thought through applications (and that includes the GUI).
I think Nautilus is swell and the whole GNOME desktop is a great accomplishment for the open source community, but it's nowhere near the refinement of the MacOS GUI. The diffrences are not obvious right away since most people will just try to use the GUI as they would use Windows or GNOME. This will yield a working GUI, but you need to understand the MacOS philosophy in much the same manner as you must understand the terminal in order to get any effective work done. When you do, there is no turning back.
Oh, another thing: cut-and-paste, drag-n-drop, hardware acceleration, plug-and-play, third party driver support... those are working concepts in MacOS X. I miss that in Linux.
"The worst I have to do is come in in the morning, sit there for 3 minutes while the patches install, and do a quick reboot. It's a hell of a lot easier than finding out there's a new OpenSSL exploit and having to recompile (or download RPM's) for everything that I think might use OpenSSL."
And the worst I have to do is to click "update all" in my Red Capet (the update application that goes with Ximian Desktop) and then NOT reboot.
Seriously, if you're going to argue that things are easier in Windows just because you don't have to care, make sure you know how things actually work in the Linux realm.
I'm not so sure. Lots of errors are introduced simply because programmers write too much new code. Programmering as it is done today is not a branch of engineering, its a craft. One way to industrialize programming would be to go the same way as say civil engineering.
A civil engineer doesn't design new building elements each time she designs a new structure. Buildings and bridges are constructed from standardized elements with known characteristics and which can be manufactured efficiantly and with high quality.
Doing the same in programming would perhaps be along the lines of using higher level languages for application development, using real, standardized component frameworks with immutable components and perhaps use a bit of computer science and make (mathematically) sure that what we do will work.
All this will limit the flexibility that e.g. coding everything from scratch in C will give, but it could also help reducing the number of defects in common software. Bottom line is: if we want to be an industry, we better start behaving like one!
It's interesting to find that most comments thus far has been about the name of the app. Is there really no more to say or are people just looking for cheap Funny-karma?
I'll chip in for the ante then:
This seems to be an intreresting product for hybrid companies (like I've worked with) where the engineering part is using Linux and the manager part is using Windows/Outlook. This way there is a serious player for interconnecting the two of them that (unlike Evolution) doesn't rely on an Exchange server. If now Evolution just could start working with this as well and we'll have real interconnectivity. Good.
Bananas?
Er... so you're claiming some sort of patent/copyright ownership here? Perhaps it's time for you to start paying the chineese/indians/persians/arabs/romans/greek for developing the alphabet, maths and philosophy and logic.
I think you're right. More specifically, I'd like to point out the role of parents and schools. Biologically, we're not designed to be free until we're adults. Nature traded out inherited reflexes and instincts for flexibility, relying instead on the family structure for teaching the young what they need to function.
One thing that seems to be missing from today's curicculums is "society-skills". That's not social skills, but insted what you need to know in order to function in a society. We form societies in order to make it easier to provide specialized services (medical care, high-education, social wellfare, militay etc), but in order to society to work, people must work with it, not against it.
That's not saying you shouldn't critizise it, but there are acceptable (democratic) ways of doing that which will not disrupt its primary functions: providing stability and freedom to persue your goals.
I can kill an annoying tune on the radio by flipping it the bird.
I once heard a metaphore that I think applies to this situation: If you stand with your feet in sand, there's going to be footsteps when you leave. However, it's not until you leave that your footsteps can be erased.
For a company like Blizzard, this can mean two things:
1) They have a working learning organization that is not dependant on star players or heros. In this case, younger talent will grow to take the place of the older and the company will evolve.
2) They (like 90% of the software business) has never gotten around to create a real engineering process, and as such is dependant on specific persons. In this case, the success will follow the talent and Blizzard will be deminished by this loss.
From what I can tell about Blizzard from playing their games, I think they are closer to alternative 1. One can see a steady refinement of their game ideas from the first War Craft up to WCIII. I believe they will be affected by the loss of talent, but it increases the chances of seeing new and innovative ideas in their future games.
Very good, wish I had said that. ;)
Linux is excellent as a research OS, for when you need a tool for a completely new environment but don't want to start over. In this segment, Linux will prevail, I am sure, only to be matched by perhaps other free/open kernels.
I don't believe this to be true for the desktop.
You can learn any tool, provided it is not crafted by an idiot. The MacOS Desktop is an excellently crafted tool and no matter of choice or configurability can match the quality of the GUI design, unless you have as much GUI design experience as the professionals at Apple. Unless the open desktops (GNOME, KDE etc) gains an equally strong (and competent) guiding force in the GUI dept, it will never measure up to neither Windows nor MacOS.
After the merging of MacOS and UN*X, I just can't say much in favour of other OSs. Unfortunately, I'm poor and as such, I'll have to stay with my free desktop until I get a job.
Even though I find the proposal a bit odd, I can't really see it as something that limits free speach. You can still say anything you like.
I'm not sure how this would help the large company much, they usually have their own media machine where they can publish anything they want. It does however give the small person or company a chance to refute slander published by larger companies.
Really, wouldn't it be nice to have Microsoft publish answers to some of their silly statements about Linux companies on Microsoft's own site?
If anything, this is pro-free-discussion.
Would that be practical? Imagine a global phone number system, where the number wasn't tied to your geographical location. It would have to be a lot of digits and you couldn't reduce it due to being in the same region or country. How is that an improvement?
Considering many people today just enter a number into their the phone book of the mobile phone and never again see the actual digits, I think a system where you could register a logical name (something similar to an url) and have that automatically translated by the phone system to your current phone number (just like a DNS) would be more useful.
People don't like codes. We like logical names. Few surf the net using IP numbers, most use litteral urls. If I write a letter, I want to be able to figure out the adress from what I know of the recipient.
The postal office on the other hand, would probably go for this as it would reduce the time and cost to handle a letter or a package. Even if it is by a second/letter, it will make a big difference. However, unless they seriously reduce the postage, I'm never gona spend time looking up weird codes, they'll have to do that themselves.
Now, all this is very interesting, but personally, I do hope that snailmail will go away and be (for most things) replaced by electronic mail, which is faster, cheaper, healthier for the environment and, used correctly, more secure too.