Repeat After Me: The KDE people did NOT choose the GPL for there license.
<p>kdelibs, the package that provides the libraries for the K Desktop Enviroment is licensed under the Library or Lesser GNU Public License. There is no problem here, this is perfectally legal to link to a QPL'd app.
<p>However, other apps in KDE are licensed by their owners, who decide under what terms to licensed them under. Many of these developers chose licenses that were QPL-compatible like the Artistic or BSD license. These programs include Konqueror/most of koffice (Artistic) and kbiff (BSD, I think).
<p>Unforently several of the apps don't contain written out licenses or are licensed under the GPL. The KDE website claims that all unclearly licensed apps are copyright the owner, and can be distributed only under the GPL license without permission.
<p>The real problem is how the hell do you contact dozens of people over a program they may have written several years ago for KDE. As well all know, people move on with there lives, and email addresses tend to break after a while. So changing all GPL'd apps to a better license really is not pratical (of course if you have suggestions, please mail kde-license@lists.kde.org).
You act as if "KDE" is one person or a corpation that owns the copyright on the whole project. But it's not, it's more of a bundle of software. The only software in KDE that is all LGPL (with IS compatible with QPL) is kdelibs, which is also copyright the KDE project. Everything else is owned and therefore licensed by the indivual coders, in which there is hunderds of people.
While the KDE project does have CVS logs, and the alike, contacting hunderds of people isn't easy. Many people's email address have changed since then, and who knows where some of the early KDE hackers (back in '96, '97 and '98) are today. Heck I know several people I knew back then who don't have current contact info.
Right now Qt is license under the QPL and KDE is licensed under many different license (see the indivual programs). The core KDE libraries are lgpl, but many of the programs are GPL, BSD or Artistic.
The problem is the conflict between the GPL and the QPL that is keeping KDE out of Debian for now -- the QPL add a restriction (forcing it to be distributed) to a program, that the GPL forbids.
Hypercard was designed for Mac Pluses, with a 9 inch monochrome screen and 1024 k of RAM. Color and bigger screens were definatly just a big hack (to say the least).
Unforently, you are right, Apple's hypercard team did hardcode to much of the stuff (probably to simplify programming, and reduce requirements). Once something is hardcoded, and built in the software, it is hard to update, without completely rewritting the obsolete code. This is why Office 97 doesn't have those sliding menus -- MS Office team decided not to use the normal Microsoft Menu API. This is also why many Win 3.1 apps look and feel horrible on Win 95, the same is true with System 7 apps on Mac OS 8/9.
If they had used the APIs to the fullest it would have made there apps much more future compatible, but it would have also taken much longer to write and would be more complex.
FWIW, You can't buy a Mac without Microsoft software!!
Microsoft Internet Explorer is the default browser in Mac OS 8/9, even if it can be changed or Netscape Communicator by using the Internet Control Panel.
MSIE ships pre-installed with every new Macintosh sold (since 1997), and comes with every recent version of the Mac 0S -- which in most cases don't make MSIE an option -- you have to install it if you are going to install the Internet Applications suite in Mac OS 8/9 installer. You can however remove parts of it easily by hand -- drag it's folder to the trash by hand -- but it still tends to litter the System Folder (it might have a uninstaller, I don't remeber).
So, you might think you can get away from Microsoft by getting a Mac -- but you are only kidding yourself -- all Macs come with MSIE, and many have Microsoft Office or even some Microsoft games (like the iMac).
Of course there are many areas in the USA that are rurual and without railroads (mainly because there is no reason to run a track by them, or the hills are just too steep to run a track).
This is mainly a problem in small isolated villages in the Rockies or in the North East USA (New England -- VT, Eastern New York, Western Mass, etc., where hills and 10-20 mile distances seprate towns. Wireless won't work well here, many of the towns get poor radio reception, and cellphones have trouble. A nearby town, called Renselearville suffers from these problems, quite badly -- especially in the center of town which is in a small valley.
Well here I am running Debian/PPC. I guess you could say the Debian/PPC users are a minority (especially if they use KDE like me).
I used alien to create GNOME 1.2.debs from the Helix Code LinuxPPC 2000/YDL 1.2.ppc.rpm packages. They pretty much worked, with the exception of a few files being out of place (namely the gdm ones).
Also, don't forget there are some other PowerPC users that run SuSE, TurboLinux/PPC, RockLinux or MkLinux (okay, technically thats not a reguluar Linux distro).
However if you decode a MP3 file and rencode it, the quality quickly decreases. This is actually a pretty common scenario -- many people download Mp3s, decode them to put a CD. Once they have been decoded, don't even bother to rencode them -- the quality is very crappy.
Obviously copying Mp3 file bit by bit, and not decoding it is a different story -- but you have been able to do this for years with CD-R drives and audio cds. But even that isn't true bit-to-bit, since many CD-R drives make a few mistakes everytime the burn a copy (so after a dozen or so copies the quality quickly decreases).
And Mp3's after being passed around for a while start to decrease in quality. Many Mp3s have skips, and jumps in them (caused by corruption in copying or downloading them).
The same can pretty much be said about the Internet (and electronic "superstores") when it comes to selling audio gear. Face it, the mom and pop stereo stores are mainly a thing of the past, I wouldn't know where to go in the Albany area any more to talk to a salemen who loves stereo equipment as much as I do, and who would honestly recommend me to a good system.
The fact is the innocent little bussinesses in many industries are closing or are being harmed by the Internet and superstores. There is little we can do about (except close big bussiness down and tare down the Internet -- like that's going to happen:P).
Switch Commerical and Properity Closed Source development, and that statement will be right.
Qt-free edition can be used for both commerical and non-profit projects, the only requirement is you provide source with your apps.
If you develop a non-profit or commerical app, and you refuse to provide source you must purchase an $1500 license and support royality for using this library. This fee entitles you to commerical quality support, updates, preferred feature additions not to mention help make the toolkit better for both versions. This price will likely come down in the future, as Qt becomes more populuar to develop for, the main reason for the high expense now is the high development costs of maintaining (and improving) a high quality toolkit.
OpenMotif's license on the other hand does allow properity close source applications, the only requirement is that they are to be developed for OpenSource operating systems, and not closed properity systems such as Windows or Solaris or whatever.
The KDE project is working on a set of human interface guidelines, I think Windows has had some for quite a while.
The KDE user interface guidelines can be found here. They aren't quite as impressive or extensive as Apple's guidelines, but they are quite complete now, and are quite well designed (it's apparent that they have worked hard to weed out bad interfaces).
And yes, I have to agree that Apple seems to be putting way to many technologies on hold for too long. However by the time they are released, they are robust and well designed. My favorite example of this is Sherlock, while the interface was poorly designed, the searching is very speed, and the search through any text file on the drive quickly is definatly unique.
PVC has many other problems, namely burning it at low temperatures. It is a large source of dioxins, cholrides and other toxic subtances, that are directly released into the atomosphere. (Not to mention it smells really bad and put out a really black smoke similar to burning rubber).
To blame the engineers or unusual stresses placed on the software due to this virus is the question on everybodys mind.
A remotely similar thing happened about 5 years ago in western New York on I-90, a bridge callapsed after high, fast moving waters and poor engineering lead to the fall of the bridge. Several people failed to see the bridge was out (it was at the bottom of the hill, hidden from the drivers view) and went over and died between the 25 foot drive and the high waters below.
So what does this have to do with the ILOVEYOU virus? Many things. Many argued that the engineers could have never forecasted such strange conditions (including what turned out to be a very sandy place where the bridge was anchored and the extermely high waters), while others argued that the engineers should have put much more careful in considering the design of the bridge.
The fact is, the bridge fell, ILOVEYOU infected several Windows boxes and did damage to them. Is it completely the engineers fault for not perdicting the future? There was/are safeguards that could have prevented both tragities, but both cost lots of money, require major design changes and might even had been overlooked.
You can be reasonably sure on building a designing well built software, as much as you can be making cars.
Obviously, even automakers will make really bad mistakes as softwaremakers, but at least they are liable, and will fix it. An example is the 1996 Plymoth Minivans, radically redesigned, but had a bug that cause the fuel pump to leak gasoline on some models (right next the firewall, near the engine). Yes, it cost them alot to fix it, but they did. And I assume they took all possible procations before selling this car, they just couldn't predict this future flaw.
Dozens of products have life threating flaws, but at least non-software venders are usually forced to fix them.
The fact is, nobody can claim software is bug free OR that other products are bug free.
Actually the stuff in computers it probably as dangerous as abestos, if not worst. For one, how much Abestos dust gets kicked up from ceiling tiles and flooring materials. Very little, unless you are breaking them up. PC's have fans that are always running, cirtulating air in and out of the case.
Abestos is a wonderful material (seriously). It's relatively light material, it can be made into several subtances, its very much fireproof, and is usually sturdy. For all pratical purposes, the danger of Abestos is mostly in Abestos plants themselves, were poorly vented Abestos manifacturing can lead "Joe" worker to inhale large amounts on a daily bases. (This probably is also the case with computer manifacturing).
The Mac OS has AppleScript which allows a user to either script by hand -- or record a script (basically the program sends the AppleScript application any scriptable events it knows that you have just preformed to it, and writes it down in a human readable, correct format). I use AppleScript all the time when I use Mac OS -- to change my screen resolution and colors, to downloading my mail daily (well back when I used Mac OS to check mail, I now use Netscape/Debian-PPC to do this).
And then there was Mac OS System 6 (on the System Additions disk) which had an app that could record mouse movements and keystrokes -- and effectively play them back -- this feature was wonderful, one could basically script anything this way that they could do from there mouse or keyboard.
The fact is I don't see UNIX or Windows support any features comparable to this yet, although I am sure there is third party software to do this in Windows.
Population is actually just starting to go down in most first world countries today. The baby boomers generation are getting older and slowly dieing -- and there kids are not having lots of kids -- and many of them are praticing safe sex pratices -- especially with the worries of STDs.
Many people try to paint a dark picture of pollution today -- it's really not as bad as many people picture it. Today cars uses much less gas (less air pollution, less resource spent) then 30 years ago (the average car gets like 25 mpg, 30 years ago around 5 gallons), black smoke from factories doesn't exist in the US anymore, more garbage is being recycled and reused (although one could argue that the increased use of plastics is acting against it -- much plastic is burned and releases dioxin and only about 40% of plastic recycled ever gets recycled -- and it only happens once), cities have stricter pollution laws -- ie. litering has high fines, as does burning of certian "polluting" materials, etc.
Obviously there is a way to go, but in first world countries polution is much less of a problem then 20 or 30 years ago. It's just that we know more and fear more of polution today, then what we did yesterday.
That is true. But what can be done to help avoid polution? Just one person not litering a trail or road (especially out in little followed areas) can greatly improve the appearence, and make it feel cleaner.
Yes polution in general a matter of opinion of the person looking at. See gargle's post #62 -- he explains this issue quite well.
This is mainly to blame on what happened during the industrial revolution in America, and the changes it brought around. People during the industrial revolution were not neccessary the brightest, smartest people around (face it, they would work in big cities with little pay or opporunity) and would easily be fooled by brand names.
Society is getting smarter now days. People are putting more pressure on companies to clean up their acts (how come McDonalds and Walmart seem to advertise all of their "community services" the provide?). Still people are a bit to easily swindled, although the Internet is helping some of these problems.
Large monolithic companies use these stragies all of the time, and sometimes large companies are good, but most of the time they are reality of modern society. (I mean, is it pratical for everybody to manifacture stuff on their own scale, nope?)
disclamer: I don't usually visit walmart (the size scares me), I don't eat a McDonalds, and I don't particularly by brandname clothes. I do however buy mostly brandname electronics and conmputer gear.
Also don't leave out a few groups that are toying with porting to the PowerPC, namely Slackware and Mandrake. The last time I had heard, there were 3(!) teams working on porting Slackware to the PowerPC, including the offical team who owns a iMac and a G3. Linux-mandrake employees John Buswell, one of the orginal/leading developers of Linux for iMac, and runs the site iMacLinux.net. While the company apparently is toying with it internally ("because everybody else is doing it"), they have no offical release planned yet.
I am currently writing this using Debian/PowerPC that I install one Friday eve, about a month back. While it's far from perfect, it's a quite nice distro, and it's alot easier to install then people make it to sound. It also seems about as stable as YDL, and much more reliable then LinuxPPC. apt-get, and all of the debian tools are really nice.
Well not really too flavors of *BSD on PCI PowerMac computers. Only NetBSD runs on PCI PowerMac computers and some RS/6000 models, OpenBSD requires a RS/6000 or CHRP PowerPC model (due to problems with the PowerMac's OF).
Not everybody, but certianly with friends -- who most likely share the same music interest of you.
"Did they get perfect copies?"
Modern tape recorders have very good felidicity. With technologies like dolby-b/c/s/hx, you can reproduction that is quite close to the orginal record (and relatively close to the CD). And Mp3s degrade with copying! Mp3s that have been decoded and recoded more then once sound crappy, and even first time encoded Mp3s have their sound quality problems (especially with Folk and some classical music with lots of Strings). Heck, some tape copies I have made sound much better then the same 192-bits Mp3 files.
"That's the difference, infinite perfect copies. The RIAA was able to leverage and control the old scarcity for profit. If they were smart they could leverage an infinite product for profit, but they aren't smart, they're scared and panicking."
And have been doing it for 30 years or so (ever since the first consumer tape recorders of the 1960s).
"Nope, because you have a legal right to the water. Either you have paid for the water in the pipes through taxes or paid at the store for the bottled water."
Of course if you have your own well, that really doesn't apply. -grin- Although you still pay for the electricty (or whatever fuel) to run it.
And when I go camping in the adirondack park, you can go camping back in the woods for free -- and get your water from one of the many water sources out there (last summer, that's all I drank for about a week and a half).
At any rate, water is free -- but getting it often requires a service to make it pratical to get it (such as a pump, hiking to a water source, buying city water, buying bottled water, etc.)
Basically similar to Linux, which most people buy CD's, for the same reason as water.
"The 'look' of the UI is not consistant with the rest of the OS for those who choose not to use themes. Most people, believe it or not, will probably never switch their theme - or want to. Why should their browser stick out like a sore thumb?"
This has been one of my problems with Netscape 4.x on Linux, and gtk+ widgits is it use of widgits that look and feel much different the qt/KDE widgits I am use to experiencing with KDE. Hey who want's to run an ugly motif app, that sticks out like a sore thumb from a KDE or GTK desktop? I don't know about you, but I can't stand it (although KDE's cross-color theming makes is usable -- but far from perfect).
"If the look matches, the 'feel' usually does not. This is more important than it may appear to be at first. Something as subtle as how hierarchial menus are handled will often annoy or frustrate even advanced users."
I've seen this with WinAmp themes that look like Windows -- the sort that match the default Windows apps, but feel much different, and act much different. Really annonying to say the least. Kmp3 1.0 shows the best of both worlds -- it has a native KDE interface and a optional WinAmp skin mode.
"Using non-native widgets (basically, bitmaps) often stops system-wide skin/theme programs from working. Your non-standard look and feel is rendered internally inconsistant." I know the feeling -- and that why I stay away from non standard "Platium" colored widgets in all my apps -- this color is pretty much standard and easy to match -- and is easy on the eye.
"Do you want your Linux or MacOS program to behave like a Windows one, or vice versa?"
Of course not. Create a Mac program that works like a Windows program -- people will spit on it, make fun of it, and give it bad reviews. Classic examples would be Microsoft Office 4.2.1 for Mac OS.
"Non-native UIs are generally slower than native ones, for whatever reason."
Mainly because you are loading a whole new widgit set -- meaning a whole new set of widgits demanding system resources (memory, CPU, etc.), so it will always be slower then the real thing.
Good programs use the OS's native widgit and OS calls -- they are the ones that are the most stable, fastest, longest lasting, and most loved.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you missed the point with the KDE Free Qt Foundation</a>. The KDE Qt Free Foundation sole purpose is to ensure that Qt stays free and actively developed. With this agreement, Troll must continue actively developing the free edition of the Qt library. If they stop developing Qt free edition (a new release in the period of 12 months) (for a reason such as as a takeover, bankruptcy, lost of interest, etc.) the rights of Qt Free Edition will completely be transfered over to the KDE Project, under the BSD license. Also, this group is prohbited from making the license stricter, they may only make it looser then the current form (QPL 1.0). Licenses for the QPL Free License are changed by the KDE Free QT Licensing Board -- which includes two key KDE core developers elected by the core KDE developers (Roberto Alsina, Matthias Hölzer) and two key QT members elected by the Qt General Assembly (Eirik Eng, Haavard Nord). Both are respected members of their groups, and are knowledgable about licensing.
<p>This provides the best for all interests, KDE gets an excellent, commerically developed and maintained free library to develop under for the KDE project, while Troll gets a library they can sell to commerical vendors who choose to develop properity software.
<p>Of course, this sentence from the press release sums it up the best: <i>The purpose of this foundation is to guarantee the availability of
Qt for free software development now and in the future."</i>
<p>I am currently using KDE 1.1.2/Qt 1.45, and I have to say it's nothing short then excellent. I've also tried KDE 2, it's coming along nicely. It's clear these developers enjoy what they are doing, do a good job and are knowledgable on what they are developing. Keep up the good work!
Repeat After Me: The KDE people did NOT choose the GPL for there license.
<p>kdelibs, the package that provides the libraries for the K Desktop Enviroment is licensed under the Library or Lesser GNU Public License. There is no problem here, this is perfectally legal to link to a QPL'd app.
<p>However, other apps in KDE are licensed by their owners, who decide under what terms to licensed them under. Many of these developers chose licenses that were QPL-compatible like the Artistic or BSD license. These programs include Konqueror/most of koffice (Artistic) and kbiff (BSD, I think).
<p>Unforently several of the apps don't contain written out licenses or are licensed under the GPL. The KDE website claims that all unclearly licensed apps are copyright the owner, and can be distributed only under the GPL license without permission.
<p>The real problem is how the hell do you contact dozens of people over a program they may have written several years ago for KDE. As well all know, people move on with there lives, and email addresses tend to break after a while. So changing all GPL'd apps to a better license really is not pratical (of course if you have suggestions, please mail kde-license@lists.kde.org).
You act as if "KDE" is one person or a corpation that owns the copyright on the whole project. But it's not, it's more of a bundle of software. The only software in KDE that is all LGPL (with IS compatible with QPL) is kdelibs, which is also copyright the KDE project. Everything else is owned and therefore licensed by the indivual coders, in which there is hunderds of people.
While the KDE project does have CVS logs, and the alike, contacting hunderds of people isn't easy. Many people's email address have changed since then, and who knows where some of the early KDE hackers (back in '96, '97 and '98) are today. Heck I know several people I knew back then who don't have current contact info.
Right now Qt is license under the QPL and KDE is licensed under many different license (see the indivual programs). The core KDE libraries are lgpl, but many of the programs are GPL, BSD or Artistic.
The problem is the conflict between the GPL and the QPL that is keeping KDE out of Debian for now -- the QPL add a restriction (forcing it to be distributed) to a program, that the GPL forbids.
Hypercard was designed for Mac Pluses, with a 9 inch monochrome screen and 1024 k of RAM. Color and bigger screens were definatly just a big hack (to say the least).
Unforently, you are right, Apple's hypercard team did hardcode to much of the stuff (probably to simplify programming, and reduce requirements). Once something is hardcoded, and built in the software, it is hard to update, without completely rewritting the obsolete code. This is why Office 97 doesn't have those sliding menus -- MS Office team decided not to use the normal Microsoft Menu API. This is also why many Win 3.1 apps look and feel horrible on Win 95, the same is true with System 7 apps on Mac OS 8/9.
If they had used the APIs to the fullest it would have made there apps much more future compatible, but it would have also taken much longer to write and would be more complex.
FWIW, You can't buy a Mac without Microsoft software!!
Microsoft Internet Explorer is the default browser in Mac OS 8/9, even if it can be changed or Netscape Communicator by using the Internet Control Panel.
MSIE ships pre-installed with every new Macintosh sold (since 1997), and comes with every recent version of the Mac 0S -- which in most cases don't make MSIE an option -- you have to install it if you are going to install the Internet Applications suite in Mac OS 8/9 installer. You can however remove parts of it easily by hand -- drag it's folder to the trash by hand -- but it still tends to litter the System Folder (it might have a uninstaller, I don't remeber).
So, you might think you can get away from Microsoft by getting a Mac -- but you are only kidding yourself -- all Macs come with MSIE, and many have Microsoft Office or even some Microsoft games (like the iMac).
Of course there are many areas in the USA that are rurual and without railroads (mainly because there is no reason to run a track by them, or the hills are just too steep to run a track).
This is mainly a problem in small isolated villages in the Rockies or in the North East USA (New England -- VT, Eastern New York, Western Mass, etc., where hills and 10-20 mile distances seprate towns. Wireless won't work well here, many of the towns get poor radio reception, and cellphones have trouble. A nearby town, called Renselearville suffers from these problems, quite badly -- especially in the center of town which is in a small valley.
Well here I am running Debian/PPC. I guess you could say the Debian/PPC users are a minority (especially if they use KDE like me).
.debs from the Helix Code LinuxPPC 2000/YDL 1.2 .ppc.rpm packages. They pretty much worked, with the exception of a few files being out of place (namely the gdm ones).
I used alien to create GNOME 1.2
Also, don't forget there are some other PowerPC users that run SuSE, TurboLinux/PPC, RockLinux or MkLinux (okay, technically thats not a reguluar Linux distro).
However if you decode a MP3 file and rencode it, the quality quickly decreases. This is actually a pretty common scenario -- many people download Mp3s, decode them to put a CD. Once they have been decoded, don't even bother to rencode them -- the quality is very crappy.
Obviously copying Mp3 file bit by bit, and not decoding it is a different story -- but you have been able to do this for years with CD-R drives and audio cds. But even that isn't true bit-to-bit, since many CD-R drives make a few mistakes everytime the burn a copy (so after a dozen or so copies the quality quickly decreases).
And Mp3's after being passed around for a while start to decrease in quality. Many Mp3s have skips, and jumps in them (caused by corruption in copying or downloading them).
So Mp3s don't copy as perfectly as you claim....
The same can pretty much be said about the Internet (and electronic "superstores") when it comes to selling audio gear. Face it, the mom and pop stereo stores are mainly a thing of the past, I wouldn't know where to go in the Albany area any more to talk to a salemen who loves stereo equipment as much as I do, and who would honestly recommend me to a good system.
:P).
The fact is the innocent little bussinesses in many industries are closing or are being harmed by the Internet and superstores. There is little we can do about (except close big bussiness down and tare down the Internet -- like that's going to happen
Progress is progress. It's good and bad....
Switch Commerical and Properity Closed Source development, and that statement will be right.
Qt-free edition can be used for both commerical and non-profit projects, the only requirement is you provide source with your apps.
If you develop a non-profit or commerical app, and you refuse to provide source you must purchase an $1500 license and support royality for using this library. This fee entitles you to commerical quality support, updates, preferred feature additions not to mention help make the toolkit better for both versions. This price will likely come down in the future, as Qt becomes more populuar to develop for, the main reason for the high expense now is the high development costs of maintaining (and improving) a high quality toolkit.
OpenMotif's license on the other hand does allow properity close source applications, the only requirement is that they are to be developed for OpenSource operating systems, and not closed properity systems such as Windows or Solaris or whatever.
The KDE project is working on a set of human interface guidelines, I think Windows has had some for quite a while.
The KDE user interface guidelines can be found here. They aren't quite as impressive or extensive as Apple's guidelines, but they are quite complete now, and are quite well designed (it's apparent that they have worked hard to weed out bad interfaces).
And yes, I have to agree that Apple seems to be putting way to many technologies on hold for too long. However by the time they are released, they are robust and well designed. My favorite example of this is Sherlock, while the interface was poorly designed, the searching is very speed, and the search through any text file on the drive quickly is definatly unique.
PVC has many other problems, namely burning it at low temperatures. It is a large source of dioxins, cholrides and other toxic subtances, that are directly released into the atomosphere. (Not to mention it smells really bad and put out a really black smoke similar to burning rubber).
To blame the engineers or unusual stresses placed on the software due to this virus is the question on everybodys mind.
A remotely similar thing happened about 5 years ago in western New York on I-90, a bridge callapsed after high, fast moving waters and poor engineering lead to the fall of the bridge. Several people failed to see the bridge was out (it was at the bottom of the hill, hidden from the drivers view) and went over and died between the 25 foot drive and the high waters below.
So what does this have to do with the ILOVEYOU virus? Many things. Many argued that the engineers could have never forecasted such strange conditions (including what turned out to be a very sandy place where the bridge was anchored and the extermely high waters), while others argued that the engineers should have put much more careful in considering the design of the bridge.
The fact is, the bridge fell, ILOVEYOU infected several Windows boxes and did damage to them. Is it completely the engineers fault for not perdicting the future? There was/are safeguards that could have prevented both tragities, but both cost lots of money, require major design changes and might even had been overlooked.
You can be reasonably sure on building a designing well built software, as much as you can be making cars.
Obviously, even automakers will make really bad mistakes as softwaremakers, but at least they are liable, and will fix it. An example is the 1996 Plymoth Minivans, radically redesigned, but had a bug that cause the fuel pump to leak gasoline on some models (right next the firewall, near the engine). Yes, it cost them alot to fix it, but they did. And I assume they took all possible procations before selling this car, they just couldn't predict this future flaw.
Dozens of products have life threating flaws, but at least non-software venders are usually forced to fix them.
The fact is, nobody can claim software is bug free OR that other products are bug free.
Actually the stuff in computers it probably as dangerous as abestos, if not worst. For one, how much Abestos dust gets kicked up from ceiling tiles and flooring materials. Very little, unless you are breaking them up. PC's have fans that are always running, cirtulating air in and out of the case.
Abestos is a wonderful material (seriously). It's relatively light material, it can be made into several subtances, its very much fireproof, and is usually sturdy. For all pratical purposes, the danger of Abestos is mostly in Abestos plants themselves, were poorly vented Abestos manifacturing can lead "Joe" worker to inhale large amounts on a daily bases. (This probably is also the case with computer manifacturing).
The Mac OS has AppleScript which allows a user to either script by hand -- or record a script (basically the program sends the AppleScript application any scriptable events it knows that you have just preformed to it, and writes it down in a human readable, correct format). I use AppleScript all the time when I use Mac OS -- to change my screen resolution and colors, to downloading my mail daily (well back when I used Mac OS to check mail, I now use Netscape/Debian-PPC to do this).
And then there was Mac OS System 6 (on the System Additions disk) which had an app that could record mouse movements and keystrokes -- and effectively play them back -- this feature was wonderful, one could basically script anything this way that they could do from there mouse or keyboard.
The fact is I don't see UNIX or Windows support any features comparable to this yet, although I am sure there is third party software to do this in Windows.
Population is actually just starting to go down in most first world countries today. The baby boomers generation are getting older and slowly dieing -- and there kids are not having lots of kids -- and many of them are praticing safe sex pratices -- especially with the worries of STDs.
Many people try to paint a dark picture of pollution today -- it's really not as bad as many people picture it. Today cars uses much less gas (less air pollution, less resource spent) then 30 years ago (the average car gets like 25 mpg, 30 years ago around 5 gallons), black smoke from factories doesn't exist in the US anymore, more garbage is being recycled and reused (although one could argue that the increased use of plastics is acting against it -- much plastic is burned and releases dioxin and only about 40% of plastic recycled ever gets recycled -- and it only happens once), cities have stricter pollution laws -- ie. litering has high fines, as does burning of certian "polluting" materials, etc.
Obviously there is a way to go, but in first world countries polution is much less of a problem then 20 or 30 years ago. It's just that we know more and fear more of polution today, then what we did yesterday.
That is true. But what can be done to help avoid polution? Just one person not litering a trail or road (especially out in little followed areas) can greatly improve the appearence, and make it feel cleaner.
Yes polution in general a matter of opinion of the person looking at. See gargle's post #62 -- he explains this issue quite well.
This is mainly to blame on what happened during the industrial revolution in America, and the changes it brought around. People during the industrial revolution were not neccessary the brightest, smartest people around (face it, they would work in big cities with little pay or opporunity) and would easily be fooled by brand names.
Society is getting smarter now days. People are putting more pressure on companies to clean up their acts (how come McDonalds and Walmart seem to advertise all of their "community services" the provide?). Still people are a bit to easily swindled, although the Internet is helping some of these problems.
Large monolithic companies use these stragies all of the time, and sometimes large companies are good, but most of the time they are reality of modern society. (I mean, is it pratical for everybody to manifacture stuff on their own scale, nope?)
disclamer: I don't usually visit walmart (the size scares me), I don't eat a McDonalds, and I don't particularly by brandname clothes. I do however buy mostly brandname electronics and conmputer gear.
Also don't leave out a few groups that are toying with porting to the PowerPC, namely Slackware and Mandrake. The last time I had heard, there were 3(!) teams working on porting Slackware to the PowerPC, including the offical team who owns a iMac and a G3. Linux-mandrake employees John Buswell, one of the orginal/leading developers of Linux for iMac, and runs the site iMacLinux.net. While the company apparently is toying with it internally ("because everybody else is doing it"), they have no offical release planned yet.
I am currently writing this using Debian/PowerPC that I install one Friday eve, about a month back. While it's far from perfect, it's a quite nice distro, and it's alot easier to install then people make it to sound. It also seems about as stable as YDL, and much more reliable then LinuxPPC. apt-get, and all of the debian tools are really nice.
Well not really too flavors of *BSD on PCI PowerMac computers. Only NetBSD runs on PCI PowerMac computers and some RS/6000 models, OpenBSD requires a RS/6000 or CHRP PowerPC model (due to problems with the PowerMac's OF).
"Could you trade tapes with anyone in the world?"
Not everybody, but certianly with friends -- who most likely share the same music interest of you.
"Did they get perfect copies?"
Modern tape recorders have very good felidicity. With technologies like dolby-b/c/s/hx, you can reproduction that is quite close to the orginal record (and relatively close to the CD). And Mp3s degrade with copying! Mp3s that have been decoded and recoded more then once sound crappy, and even first time encoded Mp3s have their sound quality problems (especially with Folk and some classical music with lots of Strings). Heck, some tape copies I have made sound much better then the same 192-bits Mp3 files.
"That's the difference, infinite perfect copies. The RIAA was able to leverage and control the old scarcity for profit. If they were smart they could leverage an infinite product for profit, but they aren't smart, they're scared and panicking."
And have been doing it for 30 years or so (ever since the first consumer tape recorders of the 1960s).
"Nope, because you have a legal right to the water. Either you have paid for the water in the pipes through taxes or paid at the store for the bottled water."
Of course if you have your own well, that really doesn't apply. -grin- Although you still pay for the electricty (or whatever fuel) to run it.
And when I go camping in the adirondack park, you can go camping back in the woods for free -- and get your water from one of the many water sources out there (last summer, that's all I drank for about a week and a half).
At any rate, water is free -- but getting it often requires a service to make it pratical to get it (such as a pump, hiking to a water source, buying city water, buying bottled water, etc.)
Basically similar to Linux, which most people buy CD's, for the same reason as water.
"The 'look' of the UI is not consistant with the rest of the OS for those who choose not to use themes. Most people, believe it or not, will probably never switch their theme - or want to. Why should their browser stick out like a sore thumb?"
This has been one of my problems with Netscape 4.x on Linux, and gtk+ widgits is it use of widgits that look and feel much different the qt/KDE widgits I am use to experiencing with KDE. Hey who want's to run an ugly motif app, that sticks out like a sore thumb from a KDE or GTK desktop? I don't know about you, but I can't stand it (although KDE's cross-color theming makes is usable -- but far from perfect).
"If the look matches, the 'feel' usually does not. This is more important than it may appear to be at first. Something as subtle as how hierarchial menus are handled will often annoy or frustrate even advanced users."
I've seen this with WinAmp themes that look like Windows -- the sort that match the default Windows apps, but feel much different, and act much different. Really annonying to say the least. Kmp3 1.0 shows the best of both worlds -- it has a native KDE interface and a optional WinAmp skin mode.
"Using non-native widgets (basically, bitmaps) often stops system-wide skin/theme programs from working. Your non-standard look and feel is rendered internally inconsistant." I know the feeling -- and that why I stay away from non standard "Platium" colored widgets in all my apps -- this color is pretty much standard and easy to match -- and is easy on the eye.
"Do you want your Linux or MacOS program to behave like a Windows one, or vice versa?"
Of course not. Create a Mac program that works like a Windows program -- people will spit on it, make fun of it, and give it bad reviews. Classic examples would be Microsoft Office 4.2.1 for Mac OS.
"Non-native UIs are generally slower than native ones, for whatever reason."
Mainly because you are loading a whole new widgit set -- meaning a whole new set of widgits demanding system resources (memory, CPU, etc.), so it will always be slower then the real thing.
Good programs use the OS's native widgit and OS calls -- they are the ones that are the most stable, fastest, longest lasting, and most loved.