"Is there anyone you people won't make an enemy of in your Quixotic quests of stupidity?"
If Stallman had not, long ago, began his lone quest for software freedom, and had not invited others to do the same, you wouldn't have yours most precious Hybernate, Tomcat, Eclipse and others.
no, you'd most likely be paying to M$ for VB even to this day.
"You've been given a gift and all you can do is look it in the mouth."
It's not a gift. Just like M$ distributing their software for free in educational centers is not a gift.
A freeware (as in beer) raytracer with a long history and huge comunity of aficionados. It comes with a powerful and flexible scene description language in which you program your dreams.
I always thought that to be a very compelling reason to learn both to program and to have good math skill: to be able to draw your own photorealistic 3D graphics.
great tool.
some would mention csound for e-music composition too...
Changing Photoshop for Windows and GIMP for Linux and you just realize all arguments regarding professional-proprietary-product-with-years-of-R&D vs hobbyist-free-effort-with-years-of-debugging look the same.
if such companies are so eager to preserve a stupid trademark, why don't they do something to preserve their symbol: the tiger? He's in the brink of extinction, ya know?
"I don't think stuffing lots of features into firefox"
SVG is not a mere "extension": it's a vital part of the web's future user interface. It's html for the future and Firefox will have to handle it just like it does html: with a builtin renderer.
and i've installed it all over the office machines i can get my hands at. From a single download.
i'd sure like to help the download count, but bandwidth doesn't come free...
"MOST AMERICANS think like I do"
to put it buntly: if you think differently, you're not a true american, despite the American Constitution giving you the right to do so in the very First Ammendment.
quite contradictory way of thinking...
i'm not american, BTW...
"you can always go completely free (in terms of IDE price) with SharpDevelop or notepad"
Nice subtle reasoning here: SharpDevelop compared to Notepad. Note pad. This is not a tool for software developers, more like people who take notes for a job, like researchers or reporters.
You could at least mention some genuinely power free software, cross-platforms, general-purpose code editors like XEmacs or Scite. Now that is fair to compare with a good IDE like SharpDevelop...
you're aware that when for your private usage only, the GPL doesn't demand that you share your personal modifications to the code with the rest of the world, aren't you?
It's the Freedom advantage: the user has the freedom to use, share and modify (or pay others to do it) free software.
It's not like they actually will _use_ such freedoms, but they actually have it.
Let me just ilustrate this discussion with a single recent example: old time VB developers are annoyed to hell with Microsoft for dooming the old development tool and forcing VB.Net complexities down their throats. The same happened to many tools in the past: they became obsolete once the manufacturer halted development.
This simply doesn't happen in the Free Software world, where enough interest can keep the software going on well past their glorious days...
of course, you know the one really cool feature of the GNU java compiler - GCJ - is that it is a traditional, fast, ahead-of-time compiler, which is what makes it really unique and interesting. No slow VM or theoreticaly fast JIT...
But i personaly know PostgreSQL and MySQL, and would definetely go for the former.
You won't be getting DBMSs so much better or more mature than PostgreSQL in the free software world. DBMSs of this quality don't simply spring into existence out of nowhere, hype notwithstanding.
Nice to see Microsoft still playing their own, separate, proprietary little game and not supporting modern, open specifications for CSS, DOM, XForms or whatever, just like they've not been doing for the last 4 or 5 years.
Adding anti-popup or other annoying features that request the user to go through some half a dozen confirm dialogs is stupid and inherently flawed a solution when IE security problems are well known: activeX running full throttle in kernel space.
programs can now use QT, the GTK will die an awful awful death.
Yep. Except, of course, for the fact that there are far more apps written in C than in C++ for *nix platforms. GTK leverages that workforce and knowledge.
And you're insane if you think GNOME, GIMP ( father of GTK, btw ), Gnumeric, Inkscape and other high-profile apps will simply drop GTK and go for a commercial entity-controlled toolkit instead.
No more hassle making custom widgets in C.
Sure, wait for Trolltech/Microsoft/Borland/Whatever do it and package it for you. And hope that they suddenly change the license terms in the future once the usage is widespread.
It's an IDE specifically targeted at scripting languages like Perl, PHP, Python and TCL. It's based on the Gecko engine.
It is not open-source, though, neither is a Home-site website builder.
I find this amusing: people actually believe the "Episode IV" in the title of the original movie was meant to be taken seriously. Like as if it was already all in the mind of the creator, and he was already planning some 20 years down the road to make the lame prequels in all computer graphics glory. Of course, we know what Lucas wanted -- and succeeded -- with SW and "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was to relive the old adventurous theatrical series from the 30's and 40's. If SW "Episode IV" didn't make a ton of cash, there would be no sequels nor prequels. And Lucas would be best remembered for that weird scifi movie from the 70's. The same is true for Matrix. Or Back to the Future...
The "Episode IV" was there just to set the mood and to best emulate the feel of continuation from the old cinema series...
Slashdot Mirror
all great human endeavours begin with a quest.
"Is there anyone you people won't make an enemy of in your Quixotic quests of stupidity?"
If Stallman had not, long ago, began his lone quest for software freedom, and had not invited others to do the same, you wouldn't have yours most precious Hybernate, Tomcat, Eclipse and others.
no, you'd most likely be paying to M$ for VB even to this day.
"You've been given a gift and all you can do is look it in the mouth."
It's not a gift. Just like M$ distributing their software for free in educational centers is not a gift.
which _is_ javascript, though accessing a totally different API than in the browsers...
"the language is rather C-like"
yes. it's called javascript.
http://www.povray.org/
A freeware (as in beer) raytracer with a long history and huge comunity of aficionados. It comes with a powerful and flexible scene description language in which you program your dreams.
I always thought that to be a very compelling reason to learn both to program and to have good math skill: to be able to draw your own photorealistic 3D graphics.
great tool.
some would mention csound for e-music composition too...
"The GIMP is unfortunately one of the better reasons NOT to use Linux."
In what way exactly is a user-land graphical editor free-software program ( with a Window port btw ) related to an operating system kernel?
Changing Photoshop for Windows and GIMP for Linux and you just realize all arguments regarding professional-proprietary-product-with-years-of-R&D vs hobbyist-free-effort-with-years-of-debugging look the same.
This argument is moot.
if such companies are so eager to preserve a stupid trademark, why don't they do something to preserve their symbol: the tiger? He's in the brink of extinction, ya know?
"I don't think stuffing lots of features into firefox"
SVG is not a mere "extension": it's a vital part of the web's future user interface. It's html for the future and Firefox will have to handle it just like it does html: with a builtin renderer.
and i've installed it all over the office machines i can get my hands at. From a single download. i'd sure like to help the download count, but bandwidth doesn't come free...
"MOST AMERICANS think like I do" to put it buntly: if you think differently, you're not a true american, despite the American Constitution giving you the right to do so in the very First Ammendment. quite contradictory way of thinking... i'm not american, BTW...
What was so funny about the above comment? It just described what all about "trusted computing" actually is without the confusing legalese speech.
"or the world moves on from the web"
like what M$ is actually trying to do with Avalon and XAML in LongHorn?
"you can always go completely free (in terms of IDE price) with SharpDevelop or notepad"
Nice subtle reasoning here: SharpDevelop compared to Notepad. Note pad. This is not a tool for software developers, more like people who take notes for a job, like researchers or reporters.
You could at least mention some genuinely power free software, cross-platforms, general-purpose code editors like XEmacs or Scite. Now that is fair to compare with a good IDE like SharpDevelop...
"internal corporate communications"
you're aware that when for your private usage only, the GPL doesn't demand that you share your personal modifications to the code with the rest of the world, aren't you?
what's the big deal, then?
"What is the advantage for them ?"
It's the Freedom advantage: the user has the freedom to use, share and modify (or pay others to do it) free software.
It's not like they actually will _use_ such freedoms, but they actually have it.
Let me just ilustrate this discussion with a single recent example: old time VB developers are annoyed to hell with Microsoft for dooming the old development tool and forcing VB.Net complexities down their throats. The same happened to many tools in the past: they became obsolete once the manufacturer halted development.
This simply doesn't happen in the Free Software world, where enough interest can keep the software going on well past their glorious days...
of course, you know the one really cool feature of the GNU java compiler - GCJ - is that it is a traditional, fast, ahead-of-time compiler, which is what makes it really unique and interesting. No slow VM or theoreticaly fast JIT...
So, as we all can see:
Python programmers like procedures and procedure declarations;
Ruby programmers like functions and anonymous function calls;
and both languages and styles have their pros and cons and are Turing-equivalent.
boy, that was boring...
I unfortanly doubt that these databases compare to Oracle, so they are in essence racing with a dead horse
Yeah, because everyone needs Oracle for all purposes.
But i personaly know PostgreSQL and MySQL, and would definetely go for the former.
You won't be getting DBMSs so much better or more mature than PostgreSQL in the free software world. DBMSs of this quality don't simply spring into existence out of nowhere, hype notwithstanding.
Nice to see Microsoft still playing their own, separate, proprietary little game and not supporting modern, open specifications for CSS, DOM, XForms or whatever, just like they've not been doing for the last 4 or 5 years.
Adding anti-popup or other annoying features that request the user to go through some half a dozen confirm dialogs is stupid and inherently flawed a solution when IE security problems are well known: activeX running full throttle in kernel space.
bad dreams perhaps?
programs can now use QT, the GTK will die an awful awful death.
Yep. Except, of course, for the fact that there are far more apps written in C than in C++ for *nix platforms. GTK leverages that workforce and knowledge.
And you're insane if you think GNOME, GIMP ( father of GTK, btw ), Gnumeric, Inkscape and other high-profile apps will simply drop GTK and go for a commercial entity-controlled toolkit instead.
No more hassle making custom widgets in C.
Sure, wait for Trolltech/Microsoft/Borland/Whatever do it and package it for you. And hope that they suddenly change the license terms in the future once the usage is widespread.
It's an IDE specifically targeted at scripting languages like Perl, PHP, Python and TCL. It's based on the Gecko engine. It is not open-source, though, neither is a Home-site website builder.
I thought it was Tcl/TK graphical shell: wish. Now that would be a shame, not some stupid useless game...
I find this amusing: people actually believe the "Episode IV" in the title of the original movie was meant to be taken seriously. Like as if it was already all in the mind of the creator, and he was already planning some 20 years down the road to make the lame prequels in all computer graphics glory. Of course, we know what Lucas wanted -- and succeeded -- with SW and "Raiders of the Lost Ark" was to relive the old adventurous theatrical series from the 30's and 40's. If SW "Episode IV" didn't make a ton of cash, there would be no sequels nor prequels. And Lucas would be best remembered for that weird scifi movie from the 70's. The same is true for Matrix. Or Back to the Future...
The "Episode IV" was there just to set the mood and to best emulate the feel of continuation from the old cinema series...