I feel that this could somehow lead to Google developing a free as in beer ISP just as they provide amazing FAIB apps like google maps/earth, gmail, the search engine itself (have we forgot that this is an app? and probably the most widely used app outside of the OS itself...).
They just have a nack for giving ultra-cool ish away for free.
We're pretty much done as far as evolution goes. What prompts the evolutionary process? A need to adapt to an environment, propegate the species, etc.
Well, I think we're good enough at holding our own these days. Not only do we adapt to our environment, we change it (i like to say 'terraform' but some people have a hard time accepting NYC as proof...). 6+ billion of us folks seems to be a bit more than our planet can handle anyway, so no need for mother nature to worry about people dying off any time soon.
I am, however, looking forward to the Foglet stage of my own personal evolution
To all who are reading this. To all who have responded to this news article. To all those who love Gmail's new feature. *Especially* to those who responded _negetively_ about Gmail's new features.
I think I might have a message to you.
Do you like them? Use them.
Do you not like them? Don't use them.
Don't like Gmail in general for adding them? Don't use Gmail.
Do you think they take up senseless bandwidth? Well... I think I need to restate that in a couple questions to answer this one correctly:
Do you think they take up too much bandwidth now? or do you think that they take up too much bandwidth now for your intended use of e-mail? or do you think that they _don't_ take up _enough_ bandwidth for how you WILL use Gmail in the future? Do you think you won't use Gmail? Do you not use Gmail?
I think we need to stop posting unnecessarily negetive posts on Slashdot, and start posting in order to enlighten.
--
eric
P.S. Slashdot offers bold, italic, underline. They could be used to stress your argument. Did I stress my argument well? Did I use them?
M$'s explanation as to why they're not supporting CSS2 seems unjustified, and in my heart of hearts -- which usually likes to see the good in the world before the bad -- makes me feel like they're trying to cover for what is in effect a back-door vendor lock-in to M$ products, if not just forcing submission through frustration.
but do we REALLY need something like this piece of shit right now in the linux world?
first, no linux distro widely supports even 2-d graphical effects that, beside being pretty, would be the logical first steps in enhancing productivity through gpu-based graphical effects (expose, for example, speeds up my daily routine extremely well now that i've gotten the hang of it (i just use the F-buttons, not those all-too-sensative screen corners)).
my second criticism i can sum up in three words: drivers, drivers, drivers.
we all should know that one of the biggest problems in acheiving a useable, friendly linux desktop environment right now is the overabundance of perfectly fine apps devoted to the same task out there, and getting them to ALL work together seamlessly.
IMHO, our path should be toward getting the basics of slickness down first (see xorg, freedesktop.org), figuring out original ways of using those technologies to better the linux desktop experience (as oppsed to copying expose, which could definitely be improved upon), and THEN work on candy-coating everything with the third dimension.
I've gotten around a lot of the countless screen clutter out there by hacking together a consortium of the main search forms i use every day (including wikipedia) and making this my home page. I get all the information i need in one single location, and i really didn't have to learn much html to do it.
Of course i hope for the best for wikipedia and all things open source/gnu, and i trust google. If they do anything to wikipedia, i'm sure they'll have long since learned from their usenet mistakes and actually change wikipedia -- if they DO change wikipedia (pretty big if there) -- for the general public good.
But, as my subject implies, so long as i can still grab their form and use it to get to the information i need without my corneas being bombarded by some corporate advertising jiz, then i really have no personal cause for alarm.
There's a couple of points that occur to me: the mass of the object being towed by the sail is irrelevant, mostly; you could tow the Sears Tower if you want. You'd just have to fire the lasers/microwaves for a longer time.
Would you really need to fire the lasers/microwaves for a longer time? No friction/gravity in space thus nothing stopping you from throwing the Sears Tower out toward Alpha Centauri so long as you can get a footing on something and the Sears Tower cannot. Same principles apply to the sail, only its pulling instead of throwing and we've got control of the footing.
log in to www.vzwpix.com and upload the tone to there, send it w/ a picture as a picture message to your phone. you can then save the tone from the message and use it for whatever.
In order to achieve the high-level of functionality coupled with ease of use that the Gnome project is striving for, it must - simply put - be bloated. Features like DBUS and HAL implementation via daemons, CD burning, etc create an immensely intricate desktop experience. Too many people forget that the Gnome project aims at being an extremely accessible desktop while catering to as many needs as possible in an unconfusing way.
It may seem 'bloated' compared to other DEs out there, but we compare the 'big boys' of the Linux DE world not to their peers, but to their foes: Windows and OS X. In this light, is Gnome really that 'bloated'?
we will all live in mile-high pods up in the sky and drive flying cars!
well, at least this is the kind of dream that this system was designed for. I'td work perfectly in free-floating space where the only need for specific "roads" to be taken are for residential, commercial, safety (etc) reasons. This would work wonderfully (think of the sort of intricacies that could be accomplished in three dimensions.
I'm surprised the Jetsons didn't ruffle its animated feathers with slight of the hand animations like these.
Why? Because Linspire and any other future desktop-targeted Linux distro needs to be just like Windows and OS X in that they are literally 'plug and play' distros. No new computer user wants to install, configure, or tweak their system right out of the box; they want to use it. They want programs that say what they are: "Internet" "E-mail" on an easily understandable start menu. When they do want to change something like the desktop wallpaper or themes, they want something that is straight to the point and gets the job done. When the time comes that they need to install new software, it needs to be as easy as downloading a package and double clicking it (or something similar, like an easy-as-pie, not cryptically named version of 'synaptec' (sp?)).
So I'd say this is basically a good move. Linspire is easy to use. Xandros is easy to use. Both are commercial but if that's what it's going to take for computer distributors like Dell and HP to get Linux to the users, so be it. Even the candy-colored, 'easy to use' Mandrake isn't an ideal desktop for newbies.
Now, if a bunch of Gentoo l33ts out there want to get together and create a Gentoo-based distro with a straightforward, gui installer (anaconda???), simple and easy to use default gnome interface configured with an appealing theme and icons, with internet, e-mail, IM, games, and office apps installed by default, and a pretty GUI interface to portage ("What would you like to install today?"), then you might have a more free Linux distro that both newbies and linux gurus can agree upon...
I've decided that it's high time give something back to the Linux community, and in order to do that I figure its best to learn a language and start helping fix some of the GNU apps i use most along with other developers (as well as get more active in creating features that I wish certain programs had!). From what i've been reading, it seems that mono is a big part of the future of, if not Linux in general, than at least my favorite DE, Gnome. So this is what I eventually want to learn.
My question for the slashdot community is how do I start? Are there prerequesite languages I should learn beforehand? What books/sites should I look into for guidance? What sort of things can I do to just "practice", as I imagine that I can't just read a book and write an app? Anyone...?
This article brings up many good points about IE's potential of totalitarian rule over the internet in the future, but I feel that it lacks insight on certain predictions, especially those regarding longhorn.
For one, the time it will take for longhorn to be widely adopted isn't factored into this hypothesis at all. It's 2004, that means its something around 4 years since the release of Windows XP. But is it as ubiquitous as this author claims it is? Absolutely not. It costs a lot of money to upgrade a whole mess of computers to a new MS operating system, and many people just don't need to for whatever reason, so in many fronts, it hasn't been done. My high school has some 100-200 computers: some are brand spankin' new dells with XP, others are Windows 2000, and there are more than just a few OS 9 macs floating around there as well. M$ can't assume that longhorn's release - and subsequently the release of XAML, etc - will take web dominance even within four years. It will take much, much longer.
So do the math. We've had a year or so heads up on the threats that longhorn posits to the Interweb, we have 2 1/2 more at least until the sucker actually comes out, and then over 4 years for reasonable ubiquity of the OS to make developing all future websites in technologies like XAML, etc worthwhile. That's nearly a total of eight years for standards to be utilized and improved upon. There is no reason why technologies like XUL, CSS2.1 (or even 3), and SVG can't be the accepted norm before then. The word just needs to get out somehow, but that's another post altogether...
On another note, regarding his mentioning of a Google-branded mozilla or something thrown into the forray, that's just overkill. Just imagine if, instead, Google merely placed these words on the bottom list of links on its homepage:
Google recommends
Mozilla FireFox for a faster, more reliable, and more enjoyable web browsing experience.
Really, they'd only need to have it up there for what... a month? two weeks? for it to make a HUGE impact in IE's dominance. Imagine......
The majority of the posts I'm seeing that are 'anti-gnome' stem from the sheer fact that all of you out there are more than just computer users; you are programmers, devleopers, engineers, students, enthusiests, etc. Gnome is not directly targeted toward you.
The Gnome Desktop is very forward looking, as what it does is based on the assumption that Linux On The Desktop will be truely realized one day, and it is preparing to meet the needs of those future (read: not yet existing) Linux users. That isn't to say that Gnome can't be used by any contemporary Linux user with an advanced computer knowledge, it's just not made tailored to you guys. Play around with it. Get to know it a bit more. Then customize to you're liking. Gnome can work however you want it to. That's one of the more beautiful aspects of it.
As for the so-called lack of intuitiveness, this is just plain false. Gnome is as intuitive as a never-used-a-computer computer user can experience (without violating any patents!). Beacuse realistically, the _user_ needs only their home directory with a few sub directories (Documents, Pictures, Music, Movies, etc.). You don't need more than a window or two to manage them. That aforementioned Linux _user_ of the future will appreciate how easy it is to drag and drop between these folders in multiple windows. For the rest of you, it's your duty to discover that parent folder widget as well as the "Browse Folder" option in the right-click menu (i think that's where it is).
In reality, the future linux user (and really all users) will only need to access files as items in a niche program like Rhythmbox or OpenOffice/AbiWord which specifically deal with a particular document type.
I agree that maybe nautilus-cd-burner doesn't jive well anymore. Something along the lines of Mac OS X's 'Burn to CD' radioactive icon is needed somewhere, or something. Thse sorts of things are minor, however, since the Gnome desktop is still not in its future where Linux is mainstream, they still have time to figure out how to manage this issue. In the meantime, chill out, or invest time in compiling k3b.
Slashdot seems to be full of impulsive radicals who vehemently stick to their OS/DE/Apps of choice, and are quick to insult anyone or anything else that's not their favorite. It's a strange sort of application bigotry. Of course, ignorance plays no part in bigotry...
I was hoping that this would fall through. The Hobbit is nothing like LOTR in terms of themes and parallels with life. It's a fairy tale, with elves and goblins (or whatever rode the wargs in the Hobbit... Orcs i guess?) and dragons and the such. The ring was never hinted as being a _bad_ thing necessarily in The Hobbit, other than the fact that Gollum seemed to act a little strange in its presence. It certainly wasn't a metaphor for the corruption associated with greed and capitalism as it was in LOTR.....
When I first read the Hobbit, it more or less manifested itself as a surreal CG fairy tale in my head. It started out with 12 or so dwarves who, unlike Gimli in the movie, wore colored hoods and were very quick-witted and bubbly. the Trolls after that were these enormous dopey monsters, very comical and dumb. Then the elves... nothing like the 6'+, slender, statue-esque figures of Jacksondom at all. I pictured them being more like Santa Claus's elves, with weird little hats and elongated limbs and such... strange and playful, not serious and meloncholy.
IMHO, the realization of The Hobbit in the CG cutscenes of the video game I saw advertised are much more on the mark. Superdeformed FFVI characters and the like, and the cartooniness just seemed to make a lot more sense. If Jackson pursues this as he wonderfully did with the trilogy, i fear it can only end in a complete fabrication of anything resembling the original story. It just _can't_ work in live action with these overly serious, forlorn elves (they're my biggest worry, if you couldn't tell).
Think Pete reads/.?
It it seems that people either get epiphany, or they don't. Epiphany is not meant for your average slashdot poster. It is meant for the (nonexistant) computer user who uses gnome as thier only OS and just wants to be able to browse. This user will never use mouse gestures. This user will not want to customize their back/forward buttons, and all those other fun clickable objects.
I'm no computer programmer or even an "expert", but i know my way around linux - that is, i can compile pretty much everything i need just how i need it - and of course windows is no biggie. I'm just wondering... could someone potentially use this code and maked a hacked version of Win2k? Make it more secure, or infuse some sort of unix code, or perhaps make it a bit more possible to run windows apps on linux? Of course, for personal use and interest... god only knows how badly every linux user would be sued if a true "Lindows" made its way to the web......
Slashdot Mirror
They just have a nack for giving ultra-cool ish away for free.
No?
Damn.
Well, I think we're good enough at holding our own these days. Not only do we adapt to our environment, we change it (i like to say 'terraform' but some people have a hard time accepting NYC as proof...). 6+ billion of us folks seems to be a bit more than our planet can handle anyway, so no need for mother nature to worry about people dying off any time soon.
I am, however, looking forward to the Foglet stage of my own personal evolution
does that mean that Humanity could have been an accident of nature? Makes too much sense these days... Humans = bug; bug != feature
Hell is freezing over _too_ fast. We're nearly frostbitten already... 2012, the aztecs said?
To all who are reading this. To all who have responded to this news article. To all those who love Gmail's new feature. *Especially* to those who responded _negetively_ about Gmail's new features. I think I might have a message to you. Do you like them? Use them. Do you not like them? Don't use them. Don't like Gmail in general for adding them? Don't use Gmail. Do you think they take up senseless bandwidth? Well... I think I need to restate that in a couple questions to answer this one correctly: Do you think they take up too much bandwidth now? or do you think that they take up too much bandwidth now for your intended use of e-mail? or do you think that they _don't_ take up _enough_ bandwidth for how you WILL use Gmail in the future? Do you think you won't use Gmail? Do you not use Gmail? I think we need to stop posting unnecessarily negetive posts on Slashdot, and start posting in order to enlighten. -- eric P.S. Slashdot offers bold, italic, underline. They could be used to stress your argument. Did I stress my argument well? Did I use them?
M$'s explanation as to why they're not supporting CSS2 seems unjustified, and in my heart of hearts -- which usually likes to see the good in the world before the bad -- makes me feel like they're trying to cover for what is in effect a back-door vendor lock-in to M$ products, if not just forcing submission through frustration.
but do we REALLY need something like this piece of shit right now in the linux world?
first, no linux distro widely supports even 2-d graphical effects that, beside being pretty, would be the logical first steps in enhancing productivity through gpu-based graphical effects (expose, for example, speeds up my daily routine extremely well now that i've gotten the hang of it (i just use the F-buttons, not those all-too-sensative screen corners)).
my second criticism i can sum up in three words: drivers, drivers, drivers.
we all should know that one of the biggest problems in acheiving a useable, friendly linux desktop environment right now is the overabundance of perfectly fine apps devoted to the same task out there, and getting them to ALL work together seamlessly.
IMHO, our path should be toward getting the basics of slickness down first (see xorg, freedesktop.org), figuring out original ways of using those technologies to better the linux desktop experience (as oppsed to copying expose, which could definitely be improved upon), and THEN work on candy-coating everything with the third dimension.
I've gotten around a lot of the countless screen clutter out there by hacking together a consortium of the main search forms i use every day (including wikipedia) and making this my home page. I get all the information i need in one single location, and i really didn't have to learn much html to do it.
Of course i hope for the best for wikipedia and all things open source/gnu, and i trust google. If they do anything to wikipedia, i'm sure they'll have long since learned from their usenet mistakes and actually change wikipedia -- if they DO change wikipedia (pretty big if there) -- for the general public good.
But, as my subject implies, so long as i can still grab their form and use it to get to the information i need without my corneas being bombarded by some corporate advertising jiz, then i really have no personal cause for alarm.
Would you really need to fire the lasers/microwaves for a longer time? No friction/gravity in space thus nothing stopping you from throwing the Sears Tower out toward Alpha Centauri so long as you can get a footing on something and the Sears Tower cannot. Same principles apply to the sail, only its pulling instead of throwing and we've got control of the footing.
Please correct me if i'm wrong.
... flying car?
log in to www.vzwpix.com and upload the tone to there, send it w/ a picture as a picture message to your phone. you can then save the tone from the message and use it for whatever.
In order to achieve the high-level of functionality coupled with ease of use that the Gnome project is striving for, it must - simply put - be bloated. Features like DBUS and HAL implementation via daemons, CD burning, etc create an immensely intricate desktop experience. Too many people forget that the Gnome project aims at being an extremely accessible desktop while catering to as many needs as possible in an unconfusing way.
It may seem 'bloated' compared to other DEs out there, but we compare the 'big boys' of the Linux DE world not to their peers, but to their foes: Windows and OS X. In this light, is Gnome really that 'bloated'?
well, at least this is the kind of dream that this system was designed for. I'td work perfectly in free-floating space where the only need for specific "roads" to be taken are for residential, commercial, safety (etc) reasons. This would work wonderfully (think of the sort of intricacies that could be accomplished in three dimensions.
I'm surprised the Jetsons didn't ruffle its animated feathers with slight of the hand animations like these.
Why? Because Linspire and any other future desktop-targeted Linux distro needs to be just like Windows and OS X in that they are literally 'plug and play' distros. No new computer user wants to install, configure, or tweak their system right out of the box; they want to use it. They want programs that say what they are: "Internet" "E-mail" on an easily understandable start menu. When they do want to change something like the desktop wallpaper or themes, they want something that is straight to the point and gets the job done. When the time comes that they need to install new software, it needs to be as easy as downloading a package and double clicking it (or something similar, like an easy-as-pie, not cryptically named version of 'synaptec' (sp?)).
So I'd say this is basically a good move. Linspire is easy to use. Xandros is easy to use. Both are commercial but if that's what it's going to take for computer distributors like Dell and HP to get Linux to the users, so be it. Even the candy-colored, 'easy to use' Mandrake isn't an ideal desktop for newbies.
Now, if a bunch of Gentoo l33ts out there want to get together and create a Gentoo-based distro with a straightforward, gui installer (anaconda???), simple and easy to use default gnome interface configured with an appealing theme and icons, with internet, e-mail, IM, games, and office apps installed by default, and a pretty GUI interface to portage ("What would you like to install today?"), then you might have a more free Linux distro that both newbies and linux gurus can agree upon...
My question for the slashdot community is how do I start? Are there prerequesite languages I should learn beforehand? What books/sites should I look into for guidance? What sort of things can I do to just "practice", as I imagine that I can't just read a book and write an app? Anyone...?
Checking your info before posting a comment? I'm sorry but that's just not the slashdot way!
This article brings up many good points about IE's potential of totalitarian rule over the internet in the future, but I feel that it lacks insight on certain predictions, especially those regarding longhorn.
For one, the time it will take for longhorn to be widely adopted isn't factored into this hypothesis at all. It's 2004, that means its something around 4 years since the release of Windows XP. But is it as ubiquitous as this author claims it is? Absolutely not. It costs a lot of money to upgrade a whole mess of computers to a new MS operating system, and many people just don't need to for whatever reason, so in many fronts, it hasn't been done. My high school has some 100-200 computers: some are brand spankin' new dells with XP, others are Windows 2000, and there are more than just a few OS 9 macs floating around there as well. M$ can't assume that longhorn's release - and subsequently the release of XAML, etc - will take web dominance even within four years. It will take much, much longer.
So do the math. We've had a year or so heads up on the threats that longhorn posits to the Interweb, we have 2 1/2 more at least until the sucker actually comes out, and then over 4 years for reasonable ubiquity of the OS to make developing all future websites in technologies like XAML, etc worthwhile. That's nearly a total of eight years for standards to be utilized and improved upon. There is no reason why technologies like XUL, CSS2.1 (or even 3), and SVG can't be the accepted norm before then. The word just needs to get out somehow, but that's another post altogether...
On another note, regarding his mentioning of a Google-branded mozilla or something thrown into the forray, that's just overkill. Just imagine if, instead, Google merely placed these words on the bottom list of links on its homepage:
Really, they'd only need to have it up there for what... a month? two weeks? for it to make a HUGE impact in IE's dominance. Imagine......
Modders as the new P2P demons! Is there and RIAA of the video game industry?
The majority of the posts I'm seeing that are 'anti-gnome' stem from the sheer fact that all of you out there are more than just computer users; you are programmers, devleopers, engineers, students, enthusiests, etc. Gnome is not directly targeted toward you.
The Gnome Desktop is very forward looking, as what it does is based on the assumption that Linux On The Desktop will be truely realized one day, and it is preparing to meet the needs of those future (read: not yet existing) Linux users. That isn't to say that Gnome can't be used by any contemporary Linux user with an advanced computer knowledge, it's just not made tailored to you guys. Play around with it. Get to know it a bit more. Then customize to you're liking. Gnome can work however you want it to. That's one of the more beautiful aspects of it.
As for the so-called lack of intuitiveness, this is just plain false. Gnome is as intuitive as a never-used-a-computer computer user can experience (without violating any patents!). Beacuse realistically, the _user_ needs only their home directory with a few sub directories (Documents, Pictures, Music, Movies, etc.). You don't need more than a window or two to manage them. That aforementioned Linux _user_ of the future will appreciate how easy it is to drag and drop between these folders in multiple windows. For the rest of you, it's your duty to discover that parent folder widget as well as the "Browse Folder" option in the right-click menu (i think that's where it is).
In reality, the future linux user (and really all users) will only need to access files as items in a niche program like Rhythmbox or OpenOffice/AbiWord which specifically deal with a particular document type.
I agree that maybe nautilus-cd-burner doesn't jive well anymore. Something along the lines of Mac OS X's 'Burn to CD' radioactive icon is needed somewhere, or something. Thse sorts of things are minor, however, since the Gnome desktop is still not in its future where Linux is mainstream, they still have time to figure out how to manage this issue. In the meantime, chill out, or invest time in compiling k3b.
Slashdot seems to be full of impulsive radicals who vehemently stick to their OS/DE/Apps of choice, and are quick to insult anyone or anything else that's not their favorite. It's a strange sort of application bigotry. Of course, ignorance plays no part in bigotry...
I was hoping that this would fall through. The Hobbit is nothing like LOTR in terms of themes and parallels with life. It's a fairy tale, with elves and goblins (or whatever rode the wargs in the Hobbit... Orcs i guess?) and dragons and the such. The ring was never hinted as being a _bad_ thing necessarily in The Hobbit, other than the fact that Gollum seemed to act a little strange in its presence. It certainly wasn't a metaphor for the corruption associated with greed and capitalism as it was in LOTR..... When I first read the Hobbit, it more or less manifested itself as a surreal CG fairy tale in my head. It started out with 12 or so dwarves who, unlike Gimli in the movie, wore colored hoods and were very quick-witted and bubbly. the Trolls after that were these enormous dopey monsters, very comical and dumb. Then the elves... nothing like the 6'+, slender, statue-esque figures of Jacksondom at all. I pictured them being more like Santa Claus's elves, with weird little hats and elongated limbs and such... strange and playful, not serious and meloncholy. IMHO, the realization of The Hobbit in the CG cutscenes of the video game I saw advertised are much more on the mark. Superdeformed FFVI characters and the like, and the cartooniness just seemed to make a lot more sense. If Jackson pursues this as he wonderfully did with the trilogy, i fear it can only end in a complete fabrication of anything resembling the original story. It just _can't_ work in live action with these overly serious, forlorn elves (they're my biggest worry, if you couldn't tell). Think Pete reads /.?
It it seems that people either get epiphany, or they don't. Epiphany is not meant for your average slashdot poster. It is meant for the (nonexistant) computer user who uses gnome as thier only OS and just wants to be able to browse. This user will never use mouse gestures. This user will not want to customize their back/forward buttons, and all those other fun clickable objects.
Use firefox and shut up.
The quote is "Alcohol", not "Liquor"... Is it possible to be a simpsons n00b?
I'm no computer programmer or even an "expert", but i know my way around linux - that is, i can compile pretty much everything i need just how i need it - and of course windows is no biggie. I'm just wondering... could someone potentially use this code and maked a hacked version of Win2k? Make it more secure, or infuse some sort of unix code, or perhaps make it a bit more possible to run windows apps on linux? Of course, for personal use and interest... god only knows how badly every linux user would be sued if a true "Lindows" made its way to the web......
According to the Dell link in the article abstract, you can get any one of those PCs with Red Hat Linux Enterprise.......