Umm... I use GNOME at home and work, and enjoy it very much, but it's a far cry from beautiful.
Take a look at this site and this one. As far as GUI artwork goes, it's about the best I've ever seen. The OSX stuff may give it a run for its money, but the Microsoft folks can't offer anything close (obviously this is just my dumb opinion). Keep in mind that the truly "good" artwork hasn't really shown up until Gnome 2.0, and I think quite a bit of it is only packaged with 2.2 and beyond.
IANAL, but I'm not certain this is a cease-and-desist letter. Having read quite a number of legal nastygrams, this has to be the friendliest tone I've seen yet. It appears to be nothing more than a request, as it makes no real demand, and implies no negative consequences for noncompliance. I would imagine the Google attorney is well aware of the fact that verbs are not provided trademark protection. Looking at the present definition of google on wordspy.com, Mr. McFedries seems to have complied with the request, in that he makes mention that the term is trademarked by Google Technology.
My full-size 4x4 pickup truck only gets 18mpg out if its 325 cubic-inch V8, and the gas cost at $2.00/gallon is killing me. According to Arianna Huffington, a Salon writer, I don't need this vehicle, nevermind the fact that I had the low range transfer case engaged but 24 hours ago climbing a muddy 30 degree incline. People simply don't need such things in the 21st century, such vehicles are purely status symbols. (Not to mention that they support terrorism....for every 10 rounds of 7.62mm ammo her 24mpg Volvo XC-90 buys the terrorists, my truck buys them 15!)
Well, given that Arianna believes that my truck is unnecessary, and I can certainly affirm that Salon is less necessary than my truck, I'm going to have to decline the invitation to subscribe during these tough times.
"Yes, they expected them to place some software on their network which scans their entire network not to mention each machine's registry."
I'm curious to know if the registry scanner has the capability to differentiate between actively installed software and previously installed software that failed to correctly uninstall itself? My guess is no.
I'm surprised Titan A.E. isn't on the list. Both I and a friend of mine own this DVD, and we've both had our copies degrade to be nearly unplayable. Mine has spent its entire life in a 200-disc carousel, where none of the other discs have had any problems.
This new policy dramatically increases the cost of maintaing Red Hat Linux in any business computing environment. I have RH machines with uptimes longer than 12 months.
Given that Red Hat has 6 month release cycles, a lot of people are going to find themselves with software that is to be EOL'd six months after it was installed, when at the time of installation it was the latest and greatest version.
I'm very partial to Red Hat Linux, but this new policy makes me rethink my opinion.
I'm a regular reader of Car and Driver, which I consider to be the most accurate and entertaining magazine of the genre. They give very frank analyses of vehicles and appear to not be intimidated by their advertisers in the slightest.
BaseLine states, "Its most striking feature, iDrive, is what Car and Driver magazine classifies as a 'miracle knob.'" They are technically correct that C/D did call it a "miracle knob", but how about a little context from the C/D article:
"Then again, the 745i may also go down as a lunatic attempt to replace intuitive controls with overwrought silicon, an electric paper clip on a lease plan. One of our senior editors needed 10 minutes just to figure out how to start it (insert the key, step on the brake, then push the start button), five minutes to drop it into gear (pull the electronic column shifter forward, then up for reverse or down for drive), and then two weaving miles to decode the arcane seat controls (select which quadrant of the seat you wish to adjust from one of four buttons located near your inboard thigh, then maneuver the adjacent joystick until posterior bliss is achieved)--all of which made him so tardy to pick up his kid that he rushed, only to get bagged by a radar boy scout within sight of the school.
In BMW's defense, we'll note here that the 745i and its various ergonomic quirks, especially the little porkpie hat on the iDrive miracle knob that controls the dash-top computer console, are designed with the noblest of intentions."
IMHO, this is journalism of the lowest form. They act as though C/D praised the device, when in fact they gave it a scathing review.
If a P2P user illegally downloads a pirated copy of Britney Spears' latest album from another P2P user, how is it that a third P2P user is made aware of the transaction?
Even if the P2P network allows hosts offering the product which the user desires to respond directly to his IP, such hosts only know that he was searching for material, which is not in violation of the law. At this point you don't whether the user intends to illegally obtain the material or simply determine if the material is possible of being obtained illegally through the network, the latter of which has entirely legitimate uses.
My company has two software products (libraries for developers). One is under an open-source license and the other is under a proprietary license. They are designed to work together, with the properietary one providing more business oriented features to complement the open-source one. Licensing of the proprietary product also funds internal development of the open-source tool.
It would be advantagous to GPL the second product, in addition to licensing it commercially. This would allow people who want use it for open-source or otherwise noncommercial projects to use it free of charge. This is a good thing, as it provides a greater user base for the product and provides marketing and testing.
My only concern with doing this is the issue of piracy. Some people/companies simply wouldn't pay $1000 for a single-server license of a product when they can simply download it and use it for free (albeit illegally). I don't have any interest in fighting piracy in cases where the product would not otherwise have been purchased in the first place, but I am somewhat concerned that smaller companies using the software on smaller projects would simply elect to believe that they are in the right using the GPL version in a commercial capacity. Obviously it would be made very clear that use of a GPL library in a commercial offering is prohibited by the GPL.
Being a corporation, a core motive is to generate a good profit, so the primary factor in this decision is which licensing policy will provide the greatest profit. I couldn't care less if the GPL/proprietary model generates twice the piracy of the proprietary-only model in the event that it also generates twice the profit.
The question on my mind is: "How many sales would I lose to people using the non-commercial version for commercial purposes?"
Any undesired ramifications can be swept under the rug as effects of "global warming", which can easily be curtailed by passing laws restricting carbon dioxide emissions which can be controlled by reducing the size of automobile engines and/or increasing hunting limits on larger animals, such as elephants.
I guess I'm really digressing here, as even talking about such consequences is irrational. Changing the "weather" every day couldn't possibly result in a "climate" change.
All this talk about the back button is interesting, but it seems to ignore one of the biggest failings with todays web browsers, and that is the whole page based metaphor. Now it works great for content that lends itself to it, but it sucks for the ever increasing sites that use the browser as an application front end vs a simple content reader. For anyone whose done any application creation in html/http you know what type of nightmare exists trying to keep track of user sessions and making your app "back button" proof.
There are application frameworks in existance which provide the capabilities you're referring to, specifically moving away from the page-based metaphor to an "application-based" approach. Check out the Echo Framework. In its case it simply disables intra-application use of the back button.
I am about as interested in having a computer in my gun as I am having a gun mounted on my computer.
One of the reasons that a pistol is an effective weapon is because it is incredibly simple. Once we start adding microcomputers, solenoids, and batteries (a.k.a., complexity), you have a less capable and more failure-prone weapon. These devices will fail in situations where their owner's lives are on the line, and innocents will die as a result. Who will be sued? Why, the gun manufacturer of course, for providing a faulty product that malfunctioned in a manner that resulted in an entirely forseeable loss of life.
This technology has potential to reduce the number of accidental gun deaths. It also has the potential to increase them, as the morons who tend to get themselves killed with guns may begin to believe that guns are safe to be toyed with if you're not the owner.
As far as suicides go, well, we need to keep in mind that guns are used in suicides simply because they are those most readily accessible method of terminating one's own life. It has been shown that gun-related suicides are somewhat proportional to gun sales. But overall suicide rate is independent of gun sales. This simply proves the obvious: people who want to committ suicide *WILL* committ suicide, regardless of whether we ban guns, bridges, or over-the-counter drugs.
It's fairly easy to turn a license plate number into a name. I figured out how to do it last week trying to reregister my truck. While making the appointment with the DMV, they asked for my plate number, which I gave, and they said my name back to me. I had provided no information other than the plate number. While I'm not absolutely certain, I believe there are a fair number of other ways through which to obtain this someone's name from their plate, e.g. if you have friends in the police or DMV.
The rest of the information used can easily be obtained from semi-public records using services such as Lexis-Nexis. This includes info such as your driver's license number, address, previous addresses, telephone, vehicle registrations, creditors, etc. If you have a state and a name, you can obtain a tremendous amount of info about a person fairly easily. Lawyers and private investigators have accounts with these services.
Overall, Ralsky's tactic is not very impressive. This man really needs to hire some higher quality goons.
Anyone know of a good unbiased comparison between J2EE to.NET? Or biased comparisons representing both sides and talking about the same general set of topics? I'm specifically interested in architectural advantages, not artificial performance tests.
I'm a J2EE developer, and on most all the message boards I read, any discussion of a J2EE technology will normally be interrupted by some.NET advocate who will blatantly say ".NET is better." The reasons range from "because Visual Studio is great", to "ASP.NET" Web forms are way better than JSP. I'm not trying to attack.NET here, but I'm very curious to know why these folks think it's better. I'm looking for an answer that is a bit more convincing than, "it is."
Yes, any aircraft can be stalled given the right conditions. If the flow over an airfoil separates, it is stalled.
Not all aircraft can be stalled by simply pulling back on the controls. And I'm not referring to computers here either. In such aircraft, if you are in normal flight conditions, and try to initiate a stall by putting the wing at too high of an angle of attack at too low of an airspeed, the aerodynamic properties of the airplane will cause it to first nose over, decreasing the angle of attack and increasing air speed. This is in no way due to any computer involvement.
The flying wing has to be scaled up to a ridiculous size to accommodate the passenger capacity of a 747.
It's not a flying wing. It's a blended-wing-body. The BWB is not a Northrop YB-49 linearly scaled to hold 400 people. It's a new airplane. There are 400 passenger variants, and they are not of ridiculous size. In fact, much of the fuel savings is derived from the fact that the similarly acommadating BWB is significantly lighter than a 747.
Additionally, flying wings are inherently unstable. They lack rudder mechanism and since the whole body acts as lift, it is massively disrupted by flight conditions in ways that commercial passenger craft aren't.
The BWB has plenty of yaw authority because of its drag ruddervons and verticals at the wingtips.
The Stealth F-117A "Wobblin' Goblin" was well known for its erratic flight, and its believed that there have been several more stealth bomber/fighter crashes than the government lets on.
The F-117 is a unique aircraft. I do not understand how it is related to the blended wing body. The principal design feature of the F-117 is low observability. Civilian BWBs are unconcerned with this characteristic. The fact that they are both somewhat triangular when viewed from above does not make the F-117 in any way indicative of the Blended Wing's performance.
The delta wing is only effective at higher speeds is my understanding.
The BWB is not a delta wing.
I can only imagine how difficult it would be to try to pilot one of these things in crash landing conditions. It probably has no control if its engine is out, like fighter craft and unlike passenger craft. Thats just not safe enough for commercial carrier flight.
The BWB will have very little thrust assymmetry in engine out conditions, much like a 727 or DC-9/MD-80. This is because the engines do not provide a significant moment on the airframe.
They also haven't caught on because flying wing technology has dragged its feet since the advantages have been limited.
This is a conclusive statement based on your previous findings, which are false. It is therefore not relevant.
Add the fact that they are expensive to design and test (especially when your prototypes are crashing all the time), and the only people really left that might be interested is the military.
All new aircraft designs are expensive to design and test. Most of the major design hurdles have been completed, and the testing is going well. So far, no BWBs have crashed. This one in particular worked out quite well.
There is a lot you can do with this technology to make flight faster and more energy efficient, but not really safer or more practical or cheaper.
This is again an unsubstantiated conclusive statement. It would've tied your argument together well if your points were valid.
Slashdot Mirror
Forgot to add one more link: Gnome 2.2 screenshots showing the artwork "in action".
Umm ... I use GNOME at home and work, and enjoy it very much, but it's a far cry from beautiful.
Take a look at this site and this one. As far as GUI artwork goes, it's about the best I've ever seen. The OSX stuff may give it a run for its money, but the Microsoft folks can't offer anything close (obviously this is just my dumb opinion). Keep in mind that the truly "good" artwork hasn't really shown up until Gnome 2.0, and I think quite a bit of it is only packaged with 2.2 and beyond.
If only kerneltrap.org were running the new schedu... oh, never mind.
IANAL, but I'm not certain this is a cease-and-desist letter. Having read quite a number of legal nastygrams, this has to be the friendliest tone I've seen yet. It appears to be nothing more than a request, as it makes no real demand, and implies no negative consequences for noncompliance. I would imagine the Google attorney is well aware of the fact that verbs are not provided trademark protection. Looking at the present definition of google on wordspy.com, Mr. McFedries seems to have complied with the request, in that he makes mention that the term is trademarked by Google Technology.
My full-size 4x4 pickup truck only gets 18mpg out if its 325 cubic-inch V8, and the gas cost at $2.00/gallon is killing me. According to Arianna Huffington, a Salon writer, I don't need this vehicle, nevermind the fact that I had the low range transfer case engaged but 24 hours ago climbing a muddy 30 degree incline. People simply don't need such things in the 21st century, such vehicles are purely status symbols. (Not to mention that they support terrorism....for every 10 rounds of 7.62mm ammo her 24mpg Volvo XC-90 buys the terrorists, my truck buys them 15!)
Well, given that Arianna believes that my truck is unnecessary, and I can certainly affirm that Salon is less necessary than my truck, I'm going to have to decline the invitation to subscribe during these tough times.
Will Microsoft be able to pull this one off?
Yes, version 3.0 of this technology will be fabulous, and deliver on all previous claims.
Will their virtual machines run operating systems other than Microsoft's?
No.
"Yes, they expected them to place some software on their network which scans their entire network not to mention each machine's registry."
I'm curious to know if the registry scanner has the capability to differentiate between actively installed software and previously installed software that failed to correctly uninstall itself? My guess is no.
I think I've found the site that shows the list of "rotting" DVD titles mentioned in the article:
http://www.pnc.com.au/~jmcmanus/dvdrot.htm
I'm surprised Titan A.E. isn't on the list. Both I and a friend of mine own this DVD, and we've both had our copies degrade to be nearly unplayable. Mine has spent its entire life in a 200-disc carousel, where none of the other discs have had any problems.
This new policy dramatically increases the cost of maintaing Red Hat Linux in any business computing environment. I have RH machines with uptimes longer than 12 months.
Given that Red Hat has 6 month release cycles, a lot of people are going to find themselves with software that is to be EOL'd six months after it was installed, when at the time of installation it was the latest and greatest version.
I'm very partial to Red Hat Linux, but this new policy makes me rethink my opinion.
I'm a regular reader of Car and Driver, which I consider to be the most accurate and entertaining magazine of the genre. They give very frank analyses of vehicles and appear to not be intimidated by their advertisers in the slightest.
BaseLine states, "Its most striking feature, iDrive, is what Car and Driver magazine classifies as a 'miracle knob.'" They are technically correct that C/D did call it a "miracle knob", but how about a little context from the C/D article:
"Then again, the 745i may also go down as a lunatic attempt to replace intuitive controls with overwrought silicon, an electric paper clip on a lease plan. One of our senior editors needed 10 minutes just to figure out how to start it (insert the key, step on the brake, then push the start button), five minutes to drop it into gear (pull the electronic column shifter forward, then up for reverse or down for drive), and then two weaving miles to decode the arcane seat controls (select which quadrant of the seat you wish to adjust from one of four buttons located near your inboard thigh, then maneuver the adjacent joystick until posterior bliss is achieved)--all of which made him so tardy to pick up his kid that he rushed, only to get bagged by a radar boy scout within sight of the school.
In BMW's defense, we'll note here that the 745i and its various ergonomic quirks, especially the little porkpie hat on the iDrive miracle knob that controls the dash-top computer console, are designed with the noblest of intentions."
IMHO, this is journalism of the lowest form. They act as though C/D praised the device, when in fact they gave it a scathing review.
melting the outer casing I sure hope mine isn't involved in the recall...it's made of metal.
If a P2P user illegally downloads a pirated copy of Britney Spears' latest album from another P2P user, how is it that a third P2P user is made aware of the transaction?
Even if the P2P network allows hosts offering the product which the user desires to respond directly to his IP, such hosts only know that he was searching for material, which is not in violation of the law. At this point you don't whether the user intends to illegally obtain the material or simply determine if the material is possible of being obtained illegally through the network, the latter of which has entirely legitimate uses.
My company has two software products (libraries for developers). One is under an open-source license and the other is under a proprietary license. They are designed to work together, with the properietary one providing more business oriented features to complement the open-source one. Licensing of the proprietary product also funds internal development of the open-source tool.
It would be advantagous to GPL the second product, in addition to licensing it commercially. This would allow people who want use it for open-source or otherwise noncommercial projects to use it free of charge. This is a good thing, as it provides a greater user base for the product and provides marketing and testing.
My only concern with doing this is the issue of piracy. Some people/companies simply wouldn't pay $1000 for a single-server license of a product when they can simply download it and use it for free (albeit illegally). I don't have any interest in fighting piracy in cases where the product would not otherwise have been purchased in the first place, but I am somewhat concerned that smaller companies using the software on smaller projects would simply elect to believe that they are in the right using the GPL version in a commercial capacity. Obviously it would be made very clear that use of a GPL library in a commercial offering is prohibited by the GPL.
Being a corporation, a core motive is to generate a good profit, so the primary factor in this decision is which licensing policy will provide the greatest profit. I couldn't care less if the GPL/proprietary model generates twice the piracy of the proprietary-only model in the event that it also generates twice the profit.
The question on my mind is: "How many sales would I lose to people using the non-commercial version for commercial purposes?"
We should screw with the weather.
Any undesired ramifications can be swept under the rug as effects of "global warming", which can easily be curtailed by passing laws restricting carbon dioxide emissions which can be controlled by reducing the size of automobile engines and/or increasing hunting limits on larger animals, such as elephants.
I guess I'm really digressing here, as even talking about such consequences is irrational. Changing the "weather" every day couldn't possibly result in a "climate" change.
multiple buttons!!!!
(From the article)
clicks action
1 read next line
2 read previous line
3 repeat line
4 close file
5 move up 10 lines
My apologies for the flamebaiting comment, but it's important to keep the mac users pissed off, as they wouldn't be much fun otherwise.
All this talk about the back button is interesting, but it seems to ignore one of the biggest failings with todays web browsers, and that is the whole page based metaphor. Now it works great for content that lends itself to it, but it sucks for the ever increasing sites that use the browser as an application front end vs a simple content reader. For anyone whose done any application creation in html/http you know what type of nightmare exists trying to keep track of user sessions and making your app "back button" proof.
There are application frameworks in existance which provide the capabilities you're referring to, specifically moving away from the page-based metaphor to an "application-based" approach. Check out the Echo Framework. In its case it simply disables intra-application use of the back button.
I am about as interested in having a computer in my gun as I am having a gun mounted on my computer.
One of the reasons that a pistol is an effective weapon is because it is incredibly simple. Once we start adding microcomputers, solenoids, and batteries (a.k.a., complexity), you have a less capable and more failure-prone weapon. These devices will fail in situations where their owner's lives are on the line, and innocents will die as a result. Who will be sued? Why, the gun manufacturer of course, for providing a faulty product that malfunctioned in a manner that resulted in an entirely forseeable loss of life.
This technology has potential to reduce the number of accidental gun deaths. It also has the potential to increase them, as the morons who tend to get themselves killed with guns may begin to believe that guns are safe to be toyed with if you're not the owner.
As far as suicides go, well, we need to keep in mind that guns are used in suicides simply because they are those most readily accessible method of terminating one's own life. It has been shown that gun-related suicides are somewhat proportional to gun sales. But overall suicide rate is independent of gun sales. This simply proves the obvious: people who want to committ suicide *WILL* committ suicide, regardless of whether we ban guns, bridges, or over-the-counter drugs.
Some facts regarding the harassing phone calls:
It's fairly easy to turn a license plate number into a name. I figured out how to do it last week trying to reregister my truck. While making the appointment with the DMV, they asked for my plate number, which I gave, and they said my name back to me. I had provided no information other than the plate number. While I'm not absolutely certain, I believe there are a fair number of other ways through which to obtain this someone's name from their plate, e.g. if you have friends in the police or DMV.
The rest of the information used can easily be obtained from semi-public records using services such as Lexis-Nexis. This includes info such as your driver's license number, address, previous addresses, telephone, vehicle registrations, creditors, etc. If you have a state and a name, you can obtain a tremendous amount of info about a person fairly easily. Lawyers and private investigators have accounts with these services.
Overall, Ralsky's tactic is not very impressive. This man really needs to hire some higher quality goons.
Anyone know of a good unbiased comparison between J2EE to .NET? Or biased comparisons representing both sides and talking about the same general set of topics? I'm specifically interested in architectural advantages, not artificial performance tests.
.NET advocate who will blatantly say ".NET is better." The reasons range from "because Visual Studio is great", to "ASP.NET" Web forms are way better than JSP. I'm not trying to attack .NET here, but I'm very curious to know why these folks think it's better. I'm looking for an answer that is a bit more convincing than, "it is."
I'm a J2EE developer, and on most all the message boards I read, any discussion of a J2EE technology will normally be interrupted by some
Yes, any aircraft can be stalled given the right conditions. If the flow over an airfoil separates, it is stalled. Not all aircraft can be stalled by simply pulling back on the controls. And I'm not referring to computers here either. In such aircraft, if you are in normal flight conditions, and try to initiate a stall by putting the wing at too high of an angle of attack at too low of an airspeed, the aerodynamic properties of the airplane will cause it to first nose over, decreasing the angle of attack and increasing air speed. This is in no way due to any computer involvement.
The flying wing has to be scaled up to a ridiculous size to accommodate the passenger capacity of a 747.
It's not a flying wing. It's a blended-wing-body. The BWB is not a Northrop YB-49 linearly scaled to hold 400 people. It's a new airplane. There are 400 passenger variants, and they are not of ridiculous size. In fact, much of the fuel savings is derived from the fact that the similarly acommadating BWB is significantly lighter than a 747.
Additionally, flying wings are inherently unstable. They lack rudder mechanism and since the whole body acts as lift, it is massively disrupted by flight conditions in ways that commercial passenger craft aren't.
The BWB has plenty of yaw authority because of its drag ruddervons and verticals at the wingtips.
The Stealth F-117A "Wobblin' Goblin" was well known for its erratic flight, and its believed that there have been several more stealth bomber/fighter crashes than the government lets on.
The F-117 is a unique aircraft. I do not understand how it is related to the blended wing body. The principal design feature of the F-117 is low observability. Civilian BWBs are unconcerned with this characteristic. The fact that they are both somewhat triangular when viewed from above does not make the F-117 in any way indicative of the Blended Wing's performance.
The delta wing is only effective at higher speeds is my understanding.
The BWB is not a delta wing.
I can only imagine how difficult it would be to try to pilot one of these things in crash landing conditions. It probably has no control if its engine is out, like fighter craft and unlike passenger craft. Thats just not safe enough for commercial carrier flight.
The BWB will have very little thrust assymmetry in engine out conditions, much like a 727 or DC-9/MD-80. This is because the engines do not provide a significant moment on the airframe.
They also haven't caught on because flying wing technology has dragged its feet since the advantages have been limited.
This is a conclusive statement based on your previous findings, which are false. It is therefore not relevant.
Add the fact that they are expensive to design and test (especially when your prototypes are crashing all the time), and the only people really left that might be interested is the military.
All new aircraft designs are expensive to design and test. Most of the major design hurdles have been completed, and the testing is going well. So far, no BWBs have crashed. This one in particular worked out quite well.
There is a lot you can do with this technology to make flight faster and more energy efficient, but not really safer or more practical or cheaper.
This is again an unsubstantiated conclusive statement. It would've tied your argument together well if your points were valid.