Yeh, mark me as a troll but think about it... Anyone who just wants to read their email, browse the web and sync their iTunes with their iPod will choose a Mac.
Yes, if they specifically want to sync their iTunes, their choices are pretty much just Mac or Windows.
But I would guess the main reason Linux struggles on the desktop (besides not being given much of a chance) is that you're talking about a mythical class of user. Users who really do only want to read email, browse the web, and play music on an iPod would be fine with Linux, and would probably be very interested to find that they can buy a laptop for less than a thousand dollars that will do all of that -- and comes preloaded with Linux, so no installation issues.
But real users always have one more thing they need to work. Linux will get you 95% there, but the last 5% is different for everyone.
Still, with this economy, I wouldn't be surprised to see people trading that last 5% for a drop in price alone, especially if they consider TCO (how often will someone have to service it?)
Presentation of text, for example. Or mapping an image onto the screen. Heck, even blitting your backing store and redrawing widgets when you move a window.
I'm trying to imagine a GUI app where I should have to care about any of these things, rather than letting a GUI toolkit, or the windowing system, take care of it for you.
Granted, there are cases where it might matter. Most don't.
Consider that even if you're only binding to OpenGL, most scripting languages are fast enough to make a reasonable game -- which you would expect to be far more resource-intensive than a 2D GUI app. I would argue that, in most cases, if your 2D GUI app is taking more CPU than a 3D game, you're doing something wrong.
...TFS already has enough wrong that I have no desire to read an entire article full of that shit.
The story is filled with astroturfers, lobbyists and others spending millions to manufacture FUD about privacy and monopoly
How is it FUD?
Google does, in fact, collect and retain entirely too much data about their users. They also have enough marketshare on Search to be entered into the dictionary as a verb.
in order to protect the obsolete business models of their patrons, who are mostly known for progress-halting monopoly and invasion of privacy.
Look, I've got no love for Microsoft, or AT&T, or big publishers. I've got a lot of love for Google -- Summer of Code is awesome, I also like net neutrality, and their products are actually useful. (I use Google Search, and my work email address is Gmail.)
However, being against people I don't like doesn't automatically make you the "good guy", nor is stating obvious and true facts a conspiracy of FUD.
No, it's not paranoia when people are out to get you. Yes, I'm sure Microsoft would like to see Google die -- I'm not sure any business likes its competitors. But that doesn't mean you have to invent things to be afraid of.
Imagine if they'd been caught actually having sex -- it's not always about being 18...
What's frustrating and perverse to me is the notion that a teenager cannot consent. Clearly, there was no adult "taking advantage" of them. Why must we go to such lengths to try to protect people from themselves?
Also, from TFA:
last month that a survey of 1,280 teens and young adults found that 20 percent of the teens said they had sent or posted nude or semi nude photos or videos of themselves.
Any law which makes 20% of the population not just criminals, but registered sex offenders if caught, is a fucking worthless law.
Has the Open Office suite evolved to a point that permits easy transition from Microsoft's suite?
Maybe. It depends what you need from Microsoft's office suite.
what are some of the pros and cons of transitioning?
Pros: Choice of OS, and a format which is truly an open standard. For example, if some people find KOffice works better, or some people prefer Gnumeric to OO Calc, there's no problem -- ODF is supported by everyone except Microsoft.
Cons: Support with Microsoft Office will probably never be "bug for bug" complete. In fact, you may want to keep a copy around for comparison. And depending how competent everyone else is, it may require some training, which means the cost is not zero -- it's lower, but not zero.
Sometimes I think their model of communism is better than our capitalism. Why? Because they potentially can now control our government's priorities.
In other words, it's better, because it appears to be working at the moment? Social Darwinism on a grand scale?
See, I don't think that makes them "better". Possibly more effective, though we still don't know.
I would argue that the problem with our capitalism is mostly the fact that we've let a free market devolve into, in many cases, corporate oligopolies. Effectively, it means our country is no longer a democracy, we're an oligarchy.
Their communism, on the other hand, always was an oligarchy, despite the facade they have of democracy. Free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion (and freedom from religion)... These aren't luxuries, they're basic requirements for a democratic republic.
At the end of the day, at least I can say whatever the fuck I want about our government, be it the elected government, or the effective corporate overlords. Were I a Chinese citizen, I wouldn't have that right.
Every new language solves problems already solved by Lisp.
Doesn't mean the language is sufficiently documented that a book wouldn't be welcome.
It also doesn't mean there's nothing interesting to write about besides a new language. After all, if this was a mature industry, wouldn't we have decided on a few common languages by now?
Examples of interesting problems: Statistical analysis of relationships, shaders and procedural generation in games, virtual machines (both the emulate-a-system kind and the just-in-time-scripts kind),
Oh, and not every problem was solved by Lisp -- in particular, concurrency wasn't. See Erlang.
Every new technology is just a piggyback on the crumbling HTTP layer.
Just what is crumbling about HTTP?
If you were talking about HTML, or Javascript, you might have a point. Maybe. But HTTP?
These days you can write your "programs" with nothing more than a mouse and a spiffy GUI.
Doesn't sound like Java, or Ruby.
Yes, you can write "programs" in Excel. And when those fall apart, often they do so thoroughly enough that you'll have to hire an actual programmer to fix things.
But there is still real logic to be written, and that still requires programmers, and the mouse is still the wrong tool for the job.
And those spiffy frameworks -- take Rails. Sure, you can bang out Hello World in seconds, and CRUD in minutes. But as soon as you need to actually build something interesting, it's going to take actual code, not just generators, along with unit tests, designers, QA, sysadmin(s), the works.
Yes, I know, you want me off your lawn. It was better when men were men and programmers were Real Programmers and you would write a jump instruction based on knowledge of exactly how fast the drive spins.
And if you really want that back -- a world where you're harder to replace, for no good reason -- COBOL is alive and well. If what you want is a low-level challenge, find somewhere performance and reliability are needed -- maybe an embedded system, or a compiler/VM, or drivers...
Linux apps *still* have issues copying/pasting any data other than text.
It has been years since I've actually seen that happen.
But I did not claim "always" -- the fact that it happens at all should be disturbing. And there are many places where free/open systems beat, or at least compete with, proprietary systems.
Where's a good package manager for Windows?
Anecdote! In any case, I suppose the "recommended" method is to grab the install CD that came with the drive and shove it in your computer, like it's always been.
Secure enough, I suppose, but:
- wastes CDs
- often out of date by the time you use it (and won't auto-update)
That's not a security hazard, necessarily. It is, however, a stability hazard.
An Installer program only has to authentice once, then it can make dozens of escalated changes to the OS.
Can a user?
Also, if you want an escalated shell, you can just right-click CMD and use "Run As Administrator."
Alright -- now, how do I get the same effect for a desktop shell, and not just a commandline?
But you're utterly, totally, ignorant of UAC so I don't even know why I'm bothering its features to you.
Because it gives you an opportunity to feel smugly superior, not just to me, but to all of Slashdot.
Classic didn't work, though.
It did.
you couldn't drag&drop between Classic apps and other apps, ditto with AppleScript and virtually every other form of intra-process communication.
Ah... you mean, it had drawbacks. It did, however, work.
Did you actually use OS X and the Classic environment? Or are you just full of shit, once again?
I did use Classic in OS X.
Moreover, there's no reason this can't be done. At least one virtual machine I've seen does allow copy-and-paste between applications within the VM and the surrounding environment. That's not even a difficult problem -- can't remember the name of it now, but there is a program which can make two physical machines, sitting side by side, running different operating systems, behave as though they were a single machine with dual monitors. Copy and paste, drag and drop, everything.
poorly-written Windows apps usually only prompt for UAC once as well. If you witnessed this behavior on Vista (which I doubt, I bet you made it up), it was probably due to a process spawning other processes which each try to perform a restricted operation.
The idea may shock you, but not all applications run as a single process. Even on Windows.
A Windows feature is that an application can either be installed for a specific user, or for all users.
This can be done on Ubuntu as well. The default configuration is a system-wide installation, with per-user configuration and state.
Now unlike you, I can't confirm or deny this because I haven't run Ubuntu in several years,
Several years ago, the same was true.
I suppose it's possible that a poorly written application would use hardcoded paths, and thus be difficult to install for a user, and not the system. I can't remember actually having a problem with that. However, hardcoded paths can be dealt with, using chroot, bind mounts, and symlinks -- all that would be needed is a suid program to make this possible without root intervention.
You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want.
Is it possible for you to realize someone agrees with you? Or does every point have to be a troll?
I was stressing that the problem of legacy apps does make it really hard to get anything sudo-like right. Your point about legacy apps is valid.
However, as Windows does have the problem of legacy ap
Using a more recent host OS and virtualization for legacy support of XP apps is a different topic really.
Probably.
I suppose I was starting from the assumption that the main reason people use Windows is for legacy apps. That's what made Vsita so bad -- the OS wasn't compelling enough on its own, and it wasn't compatible enough that you'd choose it over XP for legacy apps.
It's been awhile, but I can identify at least one problem right now: Authentication.
Either you need to prompt the user for their password from the browser -- which means SWAT needs to know about things like Sudo -- or you just restrict it to localhost, which means that any account on the local machine (including Nobody) can administer Samba as root.
I don't know whether this is still the case. I can certainly imagine how one might solve this problem -- for example, using HTTP over a UNIX socket, rather than TCP -- but then you run into problems like browser support. The only other solution I can think of is to somehow create per-user firewall rules on localhost -- is that possible?
rather than writing their own new incompatible tool.
Well, if the new incompatible tool ends up being better, since it's open source, there's no reason Samba couldn't adopt it. From what m50d is describing (I'm not them, by the way), it seems like it's not better.
when the next super-duper popular distro comes along, they'll rewrite it yet again and make the same errors.
Unlikely, if it's done well enough. See: NetworkManager. (At least, I've seen guides for how to set it up on Gentoo and such.)
The problem with Javascript + GTK is that it isn't portable to other platforms, like Windows. At least that I am aware of.
GTK+is. Webkit certainly is (see Chrome -- webkit-based, Windows-only browser -- or Safari, which runs on Windows, OS X, the iPhone...) I can't confirm right now whether seed itself has been ported, but I see no reason why it wouldn't be.
Is Qt currently more portable? Maybe -- last I checked, Gimp, at least, was shipping with a GTK+ for OS X which required X11, while Qt has a native Mac GUI. But to say that either one "isn't portable to other platforms" is just willful ignorance.
What part of "Active Desktop" was a good idea? Why are we attempting to recreate that?
Seems more like Active Desktop was a bad implementation of a good idea. (For other examples, see UAC -- I use sudo, and I like it fine, but I can't stand UAC, which is the same idea.)
But this isn't even the same idea -- it is not about setting your desktop background to some website. It is about writing new applications in a different language.
At the very least, I hope steps and measures are taken to ensure that there is NO code that can be hidden and that a complete console allowing the viewing and editing of all Javascript code complete with the ability for users to DISABLE it.
...why? Do you expect the same thing from C or Python?
Because, as I understand it, that's all that's happening here -- you can develop a desktop application in JavaScript, just as you can in C, Python, Ruby, or whatever else.
In some cases, "interpreted" languages outperform "compiled" languages.
In the more common case, if it takes a hundred cycles to perform an operation in C, and ten thousand cycles to perform the same operation in something else, it still took less than a millisecond. I don't know about you, but if a GUI app responds in a tenth of a second, it's fine.
Do you have any specific examples of interpreted programs that are "too slow"? Are you sure it's due to being interpreted?
in some cases, too flaky
Citation needed. Many systems that need to be much more reliable than desktops run in interpreted languages. You're posting on one right now, in fact -- not only is D2 written in JavaScript, but the Slashdot server code (Slashcode) is written in Perl!
Are you seriously telling me that what's fast enough to run Slashdot isn't fast enough for you?
But because there's less code to right, there's actually fewer bugs. There is, in fact, a study which shows that bugs per LOC is constant across languages -- therefore, if I can write the same program in 100 lines of Perl, Python, or Ruby, that might take 1000 lines or more of C, it probably has ten times fewer bugs.
If it runs ten times slower, but it's fast enough, I'll take that reliability any day.
Javascript lacks a clear way of enforcing interfaces. Any part of the program can extend or modify the prototype of any other object on the fly...
Many of us would consider that a feature, not a bug. But, actually, you can enforce interfaces fairly easily with closures, if you really need them.
More importantly:
invalidating reasonable assumptions which other programmers had about that object.
If you're making assumptions you want others to be aware of, the right place to do so is in documentation. Otherwise, you've got the unsolvable problem of idiot-proofing your code -- they will always build a better idiot.
If people are deliberately breaking the rules you've laid out, you're going to have problems anyway. No language can actually enforce interfaces -- it's always possible for people to go edit that source (or the binary, if they have to), perform reflection (with or without a debugger), or just scribble all over your application's address space.
Javascript also lacks multithreading support (no way to synchronize in the language itself).
Threads are evil.
More relevantly, this actually isn't much of an issue for most real applications of Javascript. I'm sorry, but when was the last time an AJAX application needed to use more than two cores?
Closures are nice if you know how to use them, but otherwise they are a serious memory leakage hazard.
...so learn how to use them.
Citation needed on the memory leakage, also.
Everybody and their mother pretends to know how to code with it.
Any language can be used to write horrible code. Any language can be used to write decent code. The real question is, how much work does it take to write decent code in one language versus another?
some people like to code GUIs from the CLI for some perverted reason.
The main reason being, you then have an easily-scriptable commandline version, and an easily-usable GUI version. Bonus is that you won't need any GUI installed at all on a server in order to use the commandline version.
You've also decoupled logic from presentation, which is generally considered A Good Thing -- it makes replacing the GUI easy, and it makes competing GUIs possible, without having to dig into any of the core logic.
Granted, it would be better to take the whole system into account when writing either -- it's a lot easier to write a GUI for a commandline app which was written with that in mind, than one which was written with nothing beyond a VT100 in mind. But the advantage still stands.
It occurs to me that, when talking about struggling with Ubuntu on that Macbook... Well, OS X uses Samba, also, and it also has its own custom GUI for it.
Of course, it's a much more polished, better-tested GUI, but I think it kind of makes the point for SWAT not being the best idea.
Worth mentioning -- while it depends on the album, you can find plenty on BitTorrent now in FLAC format, which means you're getting exactly the same quality you'd get from buying a CD.
Is sound fidelity the only reason you were buying CDs?
For my part, I don't buy CDs, because I can no longer trust physical media. There's always the (good) chance an optical drive will crap out on me, or the disc will be scratched. More worrisome is the chance that it will come with some form of DRM.
However, I find things like iTunes and Amazon MP3 a bit insulting -- there is plenty of bandwidth, and they want to sell me an album for the same price I'd pay for a CD, but already encoded in a lossy format.
Instead, I find places which will sell me lossless music, most often in FLAC, and most often without requiring any special software other than a web browser.
When you, in a few years time, buy that fancy new multi-function printer with full holographic scanning mode, hooked to the computer's wireless gigadupabit streaming modulator interface, nothing will make your XP guest OS know what to do with it.
True. However, the host OS likely will understand it.
Keep in mind, XP in this scenario is only being used for legacy things, like that crappy ActiveX app, which probably doesn't know about "full holographic scanning mode" either. For the subset of its features that said ActiveX app knows about, there's probably an interface I can use -- something as simple as IPP through the virtual network to CUPS on the host, and you've got printing.
If the ActiveX app is actually being maintained, as opposed to phased out / replaced / completely stagnating, then you have a problem.
Mostly so that I get the machine back when I want it -- no one will borrow it "just to check email" or whatever.
Also because many people have a talent for screwing things up, above and beyond what they should be able to. There's certainly no way I'd leave them alone with Windows, and come back to find MSN messenger, Yahoo messenger, IMVU, BonziBuddy, and a ton of other crap...
Of course, I could also give them a guest account, making it unlikely they could cause any real harm. I could even image the drive ahead of time. But it's easier just to declare the whole machine as off-limits.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeh, mark me as a troll but think about it ... Anyone who just wants to read their email, browse the web and sync their iTunes with their iPod will choose a Mac.
Yes, if they specifically want to sync their iTunes, their choices are pretty much just Mac or Windows.
But I would guess the main reason Linux struggles on the desktop (besides not being given much of a chance) is that you're talking about a mythical class of user. Users who really do only want to read email, browse the web, and play music on an iPod would be fine with Linux, and would probably be very interested to find that they can buy a laptop for less than a thousand dollars that will do all of that -- and comes preloaded with Linux, so no installation issues.
But real users always have one more thing they need to work. Linux will get you 95% there, but the last 5% is different for everyone.
Still, with this economy, I wouldn't be surprised to see people trading that last 5% for a drop in price alone, especially if they consider TCO (how often will someone have to service it?)
You don't want it to take it half a minute or more to move a window from one side of the screen to another.
Nor do I want my GUI app to even have to think about moving itself from one side of the screen to another. That's between the window manager and X.
Presentation of text, for example. Or mapping an image onto the screen. Heck, even blitting your backing store and redrawing widgets when you move a window.
I'm trying to imagine a GUI app where I should have to care about any of these things, rather than letting a GUI toolkit, or the windowing system, take care of it for you.
Granted, there are cases where it might matter. Most don't.
Consider that even if you're only binding to OpenGL, most scripting languages are fast enough to make a reasonable game -- which you would expect to be far more resource-intensive than a 2D GUI app. I would argue that, in most cases, if your 2D GUI app is taking more CPU than a 3D game, you're doing something wrong.
actually if done properly you can write some really nice applications in excel using VBA.
"Done properly", you can write some really nice applications in any language, for any platform. That's just Turing-completeness.
But I would say, "done properly" means not using VBA. Why make it harder on yourself than it needs to be?
...TFS already has enough wrong that I have no desire to read an entire article full of that shit.
The story is filled with astroturfers, lobbyists and others spending millions to manufacture FUD about privacy and monopoly
How is it FUD?
Google does, in fact, collect and retain entirely too much data about their users. They also have enough marketshare on Search to be entered into the dictionary as a verb.
in order to protect the obsolete business models of their patrons, who are mostly known for progress-halting monopoly and invasion of privacy.
Look, I've got no love for Microsoft, or AT&T, or big publishers. I've got a lot of love for Google -- Summer of Code is awesome, I also like net neutrality, and their products are actually useful. (I use Google Search, and my work email address is Gmail.)
However, being against people I don't like doesn't automatically make you the "good guy", nor is stating obvious and true facts a conspiracy of FUD.
No, it's not paranoia when people are out to get you. Yes, I'm sure Microsoft would like to see Google die -- I'm not sure any business likes its competitors. But that doesn't mean you have to invent things to be afraid of.
Imagine if they'd been caught actually having sex -- it's not always about being 18...
What's frustrating and perverse to me is the notion that a teenager cannot consent. Clearly, there was no adult "taking advantage" of them. Why must we go to such lengths to try to protect people from themselves?
Also, from TFA:
last month that a survey of 1,280 teens and young adults found that 20 percent of the teens said they had sent or posted nude or semi nude photos or videos of themselves.
Any law which makes 20% of the population not just criminals, but registered sex offenders if caught, is a fucking worthless law.
Has the Open Office suite evolved to a point that permits easy transition from Microsoft's suite?
Maybe. It depends what you need from Microsoft's office suite.
what are some of the pros and cons of transitioning?
Pros: Choice of OS, and a format which is truly an open standard. For example, if some people find KOffice works better, or some people prefer Gnumeric to OO Calc, there's no problem -- ODF is supported by everyone except Microsoft.
Cons: Support with Microsoft Office will probably never be "bug for bug" complete. In fact, you may want to keep a copy around for comparison. And depending how competent everyone else is, it may require some training, which means the cost is not zero -- it's lower, but not zero.
Sometimes I think their model of communism is better than our capitalism. Why? Because they potentially can now control our government's priorities.
In other words, it's better, because it appears to be working at the moment? Social Darwinism on a grand scale?
See, I don't think that makes them "better". Possibly more effective, though we still don't know.
I would argue that the problem with our capitalism is mostly the fact that we've let a free market devolve into, in many cases, corporate oligopolies. Effectively, it means our country is no longer a democracy, we're an oligarchy.
Their communism, on the other hand, always was an oligarchy, despite the facade they have of democracy. Free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion (and freedom from religion)... These aren't luxuries, they're basic requirements for a democratic republic.
At the end of the day, at least I can say whatever the fuck I want about our government, be it the elected government, or the effective corporate overlords. Were I a Chinese citizen, I wouldn't have that right.
Every new language solves problems already solved by Lisp.
Doesn't mean the language is sufficiently documented that a book wouldn't be welcome.
It also doesn't mean there's nothing interesting to write about besides a new language. After all, if this was a mature industry, wouldn't we have decided on a few common languages by now?
Examples of interesting problems: Statistical analysis of relationships, shaders and procedural generation in games, virtual machines (both the emulate-a-system kind and the just-in-time-scripts kind),
Oh, and not every problem was solved by Lisp -- in particular, concurrency wasn't. See Erlang.
Every new technology is just a piggyback on the crumbling HTTP layer.
Just what is crumbling about HTTP?
If you were talking about HTML, or Javascript, you might have a point. Maybe. But HTTP?
These days you can write your "programs" with nothing more than a mouse and a spiffy GUI.
Doesn't sound like Java, or Ruby.
Yes, you can write "programs" in Excel. And when those fall apart, often they do so thoroughly enough that you'll have to hire an actual programmer to fix things.
But there is still real logic to be written, and that still requires programmers, and the mouse is still the wrong tool for the job.
And those spiffy frameworks -- take Rails. Sure, you can bang out Hello World in seconds, and CRUD in minutes. But as soon as you need to actually build something interesting, it's going to take actual code, not just generators, along with unit tests, designers, QA, sysadmin(s), the works.
Yes, I know, you want me off your lawn. It was better when men were men and programmers were Real Programmers and you would write a jump instruction based on knowledge of exactly how fast the drive spins.
And if you really want that back -- a world where you're harder to replace, for no good reason -- COBOL is alive and well. If what you want is a low-level challenge, find somewhere performance and reliability are needed -- maybe an embedded system, or a compiler/VM, or drivers...
Linux apps *still* have issues copying/pasting any data other than text.
It has been years since I've actually seen that happen.
But I did not claim "always" -- the fact that it happens at all should be disturbing. And there are many places where free/open systems beat, or at least compete with, proprietary systems.
Where's a good package manager for Windows?
Anecdote! In any case, I suppose the "recommended" method is to grab the install CD that came with the drive and shove it in your computer, like it's always been.
Secure enough, I suppose, but:
- wastes CDs
- often out of date by the time you use it (and won't auto-update)
That's not a security hazard, necessarily. It is, however, a stability hazard.
An Installer program only has to authentice once, then it can make dozens of escalated changes to the OS.
Can a user?
Also, if you want an escalated shell, you can just right-click CMD and use "Run As Administrator."
Alright -- now, how do I get the same effect for a desktop shell, and not just a commandline?
But you're utterly, totally, ignorant of UAC so I don't even know why I'm bothering its features to you.
Because it gives you an opportunity to feel smugly superior, not just to me, but to all of Slashdot.
Classic didn't work, though.
It did.
you couldn't drag&drop between Classic apps and other apps, ditto with AppleScript and virtually every other form of intra-process communication.
Ah... you mean, it had drawbacks. It did, however, work.
Did you actually use OS X and the Classic environment? Or are you just full of shit, once again?
I did use Classic in OS X.
Moreover, there's no reason this can't be done. At least one virtual machine I've seen does allow copy-and-paste between applications within the VM and the surrounding environment. That's not even a difficult problem -- can't remember the name of it now, but there is a program which can make two physical machines, sitting side by side, running different operating systems, behave as though they were a single machine with dual monitors. Copy and paste, drag and drop, everything.
poorly-written Windows apps usually only prompt for UAC once as well. If you witnessed this behavior on Vista (which I doubt, I bet you made it up), it was probably due to a process spawning other processes which each try to perform a restricted operation.
The idea may shock you, but not all applications run as a single process. Even on Windows.
A Windows feature is that an application can either be installed for a specific user, or for all users.
This can be done on Ubuntu as well. The default configuration is a system-wide installation, with per-user configuration and state.
Now unlike you, I can't confirm or deny this because I haven't run Ubuntu in several years,
Several years ago, the same was true.
I suppose it's possible that a poorly written application would use hardcoded paths, and thus be difficult to install for a user, and not the system. I can't remember actually having a problem with that. However, hardcoded paths can be dealt with, using chroot, bind mounts, and symlinks -- all that would be needed is a suid program to make this possible without root intervention.
You go to war with the army you have, not the army you want.
Is it possible for you to realize someone agrees with you? Or does every point have to be a troll?
I was stressing that the problem of legacy apps does make it really hard to get anything sudo-like right. Your point about legacy apps is valid.
However, as Windows does have the problem of legacy ap
Using a more recent host OS and virtualization for legacy support of XP apps is a different topic really.
Probably.
I suppose I was starting from the assumption that the main reason people use Windows is for legacy apps. That's what made Vsita so bad -- the OS wasn't compelling enough on its own, and it wasn't compatible enough that you'd choose it over XP for legacy apps.
Yeah? Do you use caps-lock to type a colon or something?
Point taken.
However, I can't remember the last time I had to chord three keys at once.
Regardless, I've picked my side in that holy war.
If there were actual problems with SWAT
It's been awhile, but I can identify at least one problem right now: Authentication.
Either you need to prompt the user for their password from the browser -- which means SWAT needs to know about things like Sudo -- or you just restrict it to localhost, which means that any account on the local machine (including Nobody) can administer Samba as root.
I don't know whether this is still the case. I can certainly imagine how one might solve this problem -- for example, using HTTP over a UNIX socket, rather than TCP -- but then you run into problems like browser support. The only other solution I can think of is to somehow create per-user firewall rules on localhost -- is that possible?
rather than writing their own new incompatible tool.
Well, if the new incompatible tool ends up being better, since it's open source, there's no reason Samba couldn't adopt it. From what m50d is describing (I'm not them, by the way), it seems like it's not better.
when the next super-duper popular distro comes along, they'll rewrite it yet again and make the same errors.
Unlikely, if it's done well enough. See: NetworkManager. (At least, I've seen guides for how to set it up on Gentoo and such.)
Whether the application is scriptable has nothing whatsoever to do with whether a layout tool was used to create the GUI.
Ah, sorry -- I'm with you there, I'd much rather create the GUI with some kind of graphical assistance, even if it's just Firebug.
The problem with Javascript + GTK is that it isn't portable to other platforms, like Windows. At least that I am aware of.
GTK+ is. Webkit certainly is (see Chrome -- webkit-based, Windows-only browser -- or Safari, which runs on Windows, OS X, the iPhone...) I can't confirm right now whether seed itself has been ported, but I see no reason why it wouldn't be.
Is Qt currently more portable? Maybe -- last I checked, Gimp, at least, was shipping with a GTK+ for OS X which required X11, while Qt has a native Mac GUI. But to say that either one "isn't portable to other platforms" is just willful ignorance.
What part of "Active Desktop" was a good idea? Why are we attempting to recreate that?
Seems more like Active Desktop was a bad implementation of a good idea. (For other examples, see UAC -- I use sudo, and I like it fine, but I can't stand UAC, which is the same idea.)
But this isn't even the same idea -- it is not about setting your desktop background to some website. It is about writing new applications in a different language.
At the very least, I hope steps and measures are taken to ensure that there is NO code that can be hidden and that a complete console allowing the viewing and editing of all Javascript code complete with the ability for users to DISABLE it.
...why? Do you expect the same thing from C or Python?
Because, as I understand it, that's all that's happening here -- you can develop a desktop application in JavaScript, just as you can in C, Python, Ruby, or whatever else.
Interpreted languages are just too slow
In some cases, "interpreted" languages outperform "compiled" languages.
In the more common case, if it takes a hundred cycles to perform an operation in C, and ten thousand cycles to perform the same operation in something else, it still took less than a millisecond. I don't know about you, but if a GUI app responds in a tenth of a second, it's fine.
Do you have any specific examples of interpreted programs that are "too slow"? Are you sure it's due to being interpreted?
in some cases, too flaky
Citation needed. Many systems that need to be much more reliable than desktops run in interpreted languages. You're posting on one right now, in fact -- not only is D2 written in JavaScript, but the Slashdot server code (Slashcode) is written in Perl!
Are you seriously telling me that what's fast enough to run Slashdot isn't fast enough for you?
But because there's less code to right, there's actually fewer bugs. There is, in fact, a study which shows that bugs per LOC is constant across languages -- therefore, if I can write the same program in 100 lines of Perl, Python, or Ruby, that might take 1000 lines or more of C, it probably has ten times fewer bugs.
If it runs ten times slower, but it's fast enough, I'll take that reliability any day.
No, the way you measure that is how much effort it takes for a good programmer to do good things with it.
Javascript lacks a clear way of enforcing interfaces. Any part of the program can extend or modify the prototype of any other object on the fly...
Many of us would consider that a feature, not a bug. But, actually, you can enforce interfaces fairly easily with closures, if you really need them.
More importantly:
invalidating reasonable assumptions which other programmers had about that object.
If you're making assumptions you want others to be aware of, the right place to do so is in documentation. Otherwise, you've got the unsolvable problem of idiot-proofing your code -- they will always build a better idiot.
If people are deliberately breaking the rules you've laid out, you're going to have problems anyway. No language can actually enforce interfaces -- it's always possible for people to go edit that source (or the binary, if they have to), perform reflection (with or without a debugger), or just scribble all over your application's address space.
Javascript also lacks multithreading support (no way to synchronize in the language itself).
Threads are evil.
More relevantly, this actually isn't much of an issue for most real applications of Javascript. I'm sorry, but when was the last time an AJAX application needed to use more than two cores?
Closures are nice if you know how to use them, but otherwise they are a serious memory leakage hazard.
...so learn how to use them.
Citation needed on the memory leakage, also.
Everybody and their mother pretends to know how to code with it.
This is true regardless of language.
Any language can be used to write horrible code. Any language can be used to write decent code. The real question is, how much work does it take to write decent code in one language versus another?
That's a feature, not a bug, certainly in a language designed for the Web.
some people like to code GUIs from the CLI for some perverted reason.
The main reason being, you then have an easily-scriptable commandline version, and an easily-usable GUI version. Bonus is that you won't need any GUI installed at all on a server in order to use the commandline version.
You've also decoupled logic from presentation, which is generally considered A Good Thing -- it makes replacing the GUI easy, and it makes competing GUIs possible, without having to dig into any of the core logic.
Granted, it would be better to take the whole system into account when writing either -- it's a lot easier to write a GUI for a commandline app which was written with that in mind, than one which was written with nothing beyond a VT100 in mind. But the advantage still stands.
Not sure which to reply to, so I'll start here...
It occurs to me that, when talking about struggling with Ubuntu on that Macbook... Well, OS X uses Samba, also, and it also has its own custom GUI for it.
Of course, it's a much more polished, better-tested GUI, but I think it kind of makes the point for SWAT not being the best idea.
Worth mentioning -- while it depends on the album, you can find plenty on BitTorrent now in FLAC format, which means you're getting exactly the same quality you'd get from buying a CD.
Is sound fidelity the only reason you were buying CDs?
For my part, I don't buy CDs, because I can no longer trust physical media. There's always the (good) chance an optical drive will crap out on me, or the disc will be scratched. More worrisome is the chance that it will come with some form of DRM.
However, I find things like iTunes and Amazon MP3 a bit insulting -- there is plenty of bandwidth, and they want to sell me an album for the same price I'd pay for a CD, but already encoded in a lossy format.
Instead, I find places which will sell me lossless music, most often in FLAC, and most often without requiring any special software other than a web browser.
If I can't do that, I really don't see the point.
When you, in a few years time, buy that fancy new multi-function printer with full holographic scanning mode, hooked to the computer's wireless gigadupabit streaming modulator interface, nothing will make your XP guest OS know what to do with it.
True. However, the host OS likely will understand it.
Keep in mind, XP in this scenario is only being used for legacy things, like that crappy ActiveX app, which probably doesn't know about "full holographic scanning mode" either. For the subset of its features that said ActiveX app knows about, there's probably an interface I can use -- something as simple as IPP through the virtual network to CUPS on the host, and you've got printing.
If the ActiveX app is actually being maintained, as opposed to phased out / replaced / completely stagnating, then you have a problem.
Mostly so that I get the machine back when I want it -- no one will borrow it "just to check email" or whatever.
Also because many people have a talent for screwing things up, above and beyond what they should be able to. There's certainly no way I'd leave them alone with Windows, and come back to find MSN messenger, Yahoo messenger, IMVU, BonziBuddy, and a ton of other crap...
Of course, I could also give them a guest account, making it unlikely they could cause any real harm. I could even image the drive ahead of time. But it's easier just to declare the whole machine as off-limits.