He plainly states in the article that the studios make special deals to have access to the source code for the commercial software they use, often at very high expense.
Yes. In fact, DD did exactly this when they ran into a problem while rendering the water for Titanic.
Remember, just because you're not clever enough to imagine a situation where having the source code is useful doesn't mean such situations don't exist.
"Thousands of programmers around the world work in their free time to provide everyone with superior software" will lead to "Why would they do that?"
Because a single programmer can't write an operating system which can compete with any other out there. A single programmer would probably have a difficult time writing a really decent mail client. However, a single programmer can easily write a piece of an operating system, or a piece of a mail client, and combine it with pieces written by other single programmers to have a piece of kick ass software he never could have written himself.
Really, people, it's an easy concept. You think you're smarter than these poor Windows using schlubs. Put that alleged brain to work for a couple of minutes and you should have no problem at all explaining it.
Re:Linux is still waiting in the wings
on
Linux on the Desktop
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· Score: 2, Interesting
"they expect adoption of desktop Linux to increase over the next few years"
That's what they said a few years ago.
And they were right.
And that's probably what they'll be saying a few years from now.
And unless Linux's market share somehow magically increases to 100% in the interim, I expect they'll be right again.
Don't get me wrong, I like Linux. But it's just not for mom and pop
Hmmm. Is WinXP Pro ready for Mom and Pop? I suppose MS should just drop it now since it obviously doesn't have a future unless a blind 90 year old with a double digit IQ can figure out how to install and use it.
Linux innovates very little except in technological areas. It's GUIs even today fall short of Windows and Mac GUIs
I can't speak to Mac as I haven't used one. As for Windows, I've sat Windows users in front of a recent version of KDE and watched what they do. It takes them no time at all to figure out how to make it work. After using it for a while, they'll also start to discover all kinds of little things they like which make their time spent in the environment more pleasant. These discoveries will frequently be accompanied by "can you make Windows do that?" I have yet to see someone use KDE for any period of time who finds it lacking compared to Windows. Not once. The reverse has been true a number of times, though.
I'd be interested to know what the results of your tests of this nature have been. Or are you one of those idiots who likes to spout off about something they know nothing about because they're pretty sure it'll make them look cool to what they consider the in crowd?
To know whether the comparison made today means anything, you'd have to know whether Microsoft has fixed this in their internal nightly builds.
No you wouldn't.
As a matter of fact, you just showed yourself why the comparison means something. We all know the bug has been fixed in Mozilla. We can all get a version of Mozilla in which this bug has been fixed. We all know there will be "official" releases of browsers coming (Netscape et al) which will not have this bug.
We don't have any clue as to the status of the IE bug. The only one of these things we know about IE is whether or not we can get a fixed version today, and the answer to that is no.
You may think these things are meaningless, but that would be more an indication of your unwillingness to face reality than anything else.
I cringe every time someone says "We can export to XML,"
Why? I suppose it's possible that the people saying that don't really understand what it is they're saying, but it seems to me just as likely that you don't understand what they're saying.
I love it when people say "We can export to XML." You know why? Because then I know I can get at the data with the tools I already have available to me. I don't have to worry about whether I'm dealing with yet another binary format that I need a special program to deal with, or whether someone's using a program to generate the data which keeps its data format a closely guarded secret. If it's XML, I know that I can get to it.
Does that mean it won't be work, or that everything is done for me? Of course not. But it does mean that the hardest part of the job, making it possible and having the tools with which to do it, is already done.
Do notice that Thierer is from the Cato Institute, a Libertarian think tank.
Like most Libertarians, they think government involvement in anything is a defacto bad idea unless it increases their ability to exploit someone or something, in which case they're all for it.
Finally, KHTML is far better than Gecko. I apologize, yes, Gecko was once king. Then it became a bloated mess. Safari, with far more features than Chimera mind you, is 2.9m. Chimera is, last time I checked, 7 or 8megs. This is not neccesary, and it is because of Gecko.
Far better at what? If I let you pick the pages, I'll guarantee you that you'll find few if any that KHTML renders properly and Gecko doesn't. Let me pick the pages and I'll effortlessly find dozens that Gecko renders flawlessly while KHTML chokes and dies.
As for its alleged bloat, Gecko will fit on a floppy. A quick tour of Mozilla's installed directory structure will show you where the size comes from (here's a hint: it's the UI, stupid).
Wait, here it comes: "but KHTML is so much faster than Gecko!" I wish I knew how people were testing this. I use Mozilla every day on an old overclocked Celeron 300A, and it renders pages instantly. How the fuck you can determine something is faster than that is beyond me.
Gecko ain't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, and I imagine Safari will turn out to be a great browser, but right now Gecko kicks KHTML's ass in so many ways it's not worth discussing (KHTML's DOM support? Don't even get me started).
People really need to quit with the "eww, that's what I used yesterday and it sucks, this new thing with 10% of the features is so much better" shit. It just makes you look even stupider than you actually are.
Y'know, after reading this thread I can't decide if you're an arrogant teenager with an extremely nasty case of cluelessness, or a particularly skilled troll.
If you're a troll, my god man, you're brilliant; keep up the good work. If not, well, ummm, it's okay, have mommy change your diaper and I'm sure you'll feel better soon...
they contemplate a document with embedded codes indicating document sections, that conforms to a predefined structure
Actually, this is an almost perfect summary of the way TBL originally described HTML. If you search around the Net enough, you'll find some newsgroups postings from the early nineties where he lays it out almost exactly as you've described it. Also note that while it may have been rare for HTML to be used that way, it's always been capable of it.
Slashdot Mirror
He plainly states in the article that the studios make special deals to have access to the source code for the commercial software they use, often at very high expense.
Yes. In fact, DD did exactly this when they ran into a problem while rendering the water for Titanic.
Remember, just because you're not clever enough to imagine a situation where having the source code is useful doesn't mean such situations don't exist.
Because a single programmer can't write an operating system which can compete with any other out there. A single programmer would probably have a difficult time writing a really decent mail client. However, a single programmer can easily write a piece of an operating system, or a piece of a mail client, and combine it with pieces written by other single programmers to have a piece of kick ass software he never could have written himself.
Really, people, it's an easy concept. You think you're smarter than these poor Windows using schlubs. Put that alleged brain to work for a couple of minutes and you should have no problem at all explaining it.
That's what they said a few years ago.
And they were right.
And that's probably what they'll be saying a few years from now.
And unless Linux's market share somehow magically increases to 100% in the interim, I expect they'll be right again.
Don't get me wrong, I like Linux. But it's just not for mom and pop
Hmmm. Is WinXP Pro ready for Mom and Pop? I suppose MS should just drop it now since it obviously doesn't have a future unless a blind 90 year old with a double digit IQ can figure out how to install and use it.
Linux innovates very little except in technological areas. It's GUIs even today fall short of Windows and Mac GUIs
I can't speak to Mac as I haven't used one. As for Windows, I've sat Windows users in front of a recent version of KDE and watched what they do. It takes them no time at all to figure out how to make it work. After using it for a while, they'll also start to discover all kinds of little things they like which make their time spent in the environment more pleasant. These discoveries will frequently be accompanied by "can you make Windows do that?" I have yet to see someone use KDE for any period of time who finds it lacking compared to Windows. Not once. The reverse has been true a number of times, though.
I'd be interested to know what the results of your tests of this nature have been. Or are you one of those idiots who likes to spout off about something they know nothing about because they're pretty sure it'll make them look cool to what they consider the in crowd?
No you wouldn't.
As a matter of fact, you just showed yourself why the comparison means something. We all know the bug has been fixed in Mozilla. We can all get a version of Mozilla in which this bug has been fixed. We all know there will be "official" releases of browsers coming (Netscape et al) which will not have this bug.
We don't have any clue as to the status of the IE bug. The only one of these things we know about IE is whether or not we can get a fixed version today, and the answer to that is no.
You may think these things are meaningless, but that would be more an indication of your unwillingness to face reality than anything else.
Why? I suppose it's possible that the people saying that don't really understand what it is they're saying, but it seems to me just as likely that you don't understand what they're saying.
I love it when people say "We can export to XML." You know why? Because then I know I can get at the data with the tools I already have available to me. I don't have to worry about whether I'm dealing with yet another binary format that I need a special program to deal with, or whether someone's using a program to generate the data which keeps its data format a closely guarded secret. If it's XML, I know that I can get to it.
Does that mean it won't be work, or that everything is done for me? Of course not. But it does mean that the hardest part of the job, making it possible and having the tools with which to do it, is already done.
Like most Libertarians, they think government involvement in anything is a defacto bad idea unless it increases their ability to exploit someone or something, in which case they're all for it.
Far better at what? If I let you pick the pages, I'll guarantee you that you'll find few if any that KHTML renders properly and Gecko doesn't. Let me pick the pages and I'll effortlessly find dozens that Gecko renders flawlessly while KHTML chokes and dies.
As for its alleged bloat, Gecko will fit on a floppy. A quick tour of Mozilla's installed directory structure will show you where the size comes from (here's a hint: it's the UI, stupid).
Wait, here it comes: "but KHTML is so much faster than Gecko!" I wish I knew how people were testing this. I use Mozilla every day on an old overclocked Celeron 300A, and it renders pages instantly. How the fuck you can determine something is faster than that is beyond me.
Gecko ain't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, and I imagine Safari will turn out to be a great browser, but right now Gecko kicks KHTML's ass in so many ways it's not worth discussing (KHTML's DOM support? Don't even get me started).
People really need to quit with the "eww, that's what I used yesterday and it sucks, this new thing with 10% of the features is so much better" shit. It just makes you look even stupider than you actually are.
Y'know, after reading this thread I can't decide if you're an arrogant teenager with an extremely nasty case of cluelessness, or a particularly skilled troll.
If you're a troll, my god man, you're brilliant; keep up the good work. If not, well, ummm, it's okay, have mommy change your diaper and I'm sure you'll feel better soon...
Actually, this is an almost perfect summary of the way TBL originally described HTML. If you search around the Net enough, you'll find some newsgroups postings from the early nineties where he lays it out almost exactly as you've described it. Also note that while it may have been rare for HTML to be used that way, it's always been capable of it.
OTOH, you've brought the combination of clueless, obnoxious and loudmouthed to all new heights!