I don't think my cat uses hearing to detect an opened can of food. I did an experiment once where he was on the ground floor and at the opposite end. I carefully and quietly opened the can and *PifF* he teleported into the room, right by the bowl. I don't know how they do that.
Didn't you know? Your cat uses hearing to hear your thoughts. The sound made by opening the can was irrelevant in your experiment.
“I contend we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”- Stephen F. Roberts
I wonder if that was a smart argument originally, or if it completely missed the point, but I bet many of the atheists don't understand it when they read it.
Better way to put it would be "I contend we are both same kind of believers, even though I'm an atheist and you're not. You have religious faith in the god(s) you know in your heart to exist. So do I."
Though that doesn't yet account for the two groups of atheists, those who have faith that there is no god, and those who just don't have faith in any god.
I just don't see it. I especially don't see how CAD work would benefit from it. Don't you have a main workstation?
Well, that was just a personal example. I don't do CAD work, but I do have CAD drawings done for me, and surprisingly oftenI need to make decisions based on those drawings, or check things based on those drawings. I mean, case in point, just today I had to say on the phone that I don't have the drawings with me, I'll have to get back to you, even though I was sitting in front of an internet-connected computer.
I guess I could convert them to PDF, but not only would that be a lot of work, also normal PDF viewers aren't really very suitable for inspecting that kind of stuff (think of measuring distances in correct scale).
CAD is an excellent example also because almost everything else I use can already be practically stored in the Web. Even if there's no actual web application, having access to files is often enough because there's that standard application available. Not so for CAD stuff.
And about it being useful, have you ever juggled versions of CAD drawings to different people for review by e-mail, and tried to keep track of different versions? It's quite a hassle I can tell you, and a hassle computers should take care of almost automatically. Once the technology (HTML5, even low-end internet connection speeds improving, "Full HD" resolution becoming the standard minimum, touch screens becoming more common) advance a bit more, and more of the designers in the field will be young enough to have grown up with the Internet, the cloud is going to transform the CAD field. It will do pretty much exactly the same thing as DVCS (like git) are doing to SW engineering right now. There's just no going back, if you do any kind of collaboration (and every CAD drawing usually has at least five parties: the customer, the designer, the reviewer, the print shop doing the paper "blueprints", and the one doing the practical work).
Of course it'll be very long time before the actual designer CAD application will go to the cloud, but it will be seamlessly integrated with the cloud so that the files will be viewable in web browser, and in version control in the cloud.
It seems to me that people have totally forgotten how to run things locally. Did computers exist before the web?
Well, data is moving / has moved to the cloud and accessible from anywhere, so the applications to use that data need to be too. And when you just *have* to work locally (for example when files are too big for bandwidth, or when there's no suitable online application), it becomes apparent that "locally" is not so good. I can't count how many times I have wished an online application support for DWG (Autodesk cad format), for example. Being tied to a specific machine with the correct software is a pain!
What is different from Maemo than Android, iOS, or WinPhone 7 (when released)? The OS vendors aren't the ones controlling the prices, the developers are.
I think he was talking about "apt-get install packagename" type applications. In that world, the price is pretty much set in stone by the license, usually GPL, and for end-users is effectively zero no matter how you measure it.
What you mean "supported by what"? Supported by local production of essentials, probably mostly using solar energy and locally available matter.
I was talking about advanced materials that are needed in small enough amounts to be brought from earth, or simple enough to produce so they don't need "serious support infrastructure". I mean, that's kind of a given, materials that can't be used aren't worth wasting much thought on... Besides, it's not far fetched to speculate that mass production of fullerenes (or some other advanced material) using asteroid material and taking advantage of microgravity and hard vacuum might actually be a profitable business at some point in future.
Why would semi-self-sufficient outposts be concerned with reproduction, other than making sure it doesn't happen? Sounds rather like a useful extra layer of birth control to me... However, from your linked article, it sounds very much like gravity isn't needed for a very long time, just for a few crucial first divisions. Providing enough gravity for that amount of time would be trivial for in-vitro fertilization, and doesn't take a very large rotating structure to provide it even for natural fertilization.
However, semi-self-sufficient by definition will get supply ships from earth. There's no point in trying to raise children in space until there are real colonies, as there would be a long queue of qualified, experienced people wanting to go.
Fortunately some of us are still looking towards space
Fortunately, because you like hard radiation, needing to carry *everything* with you, effectively infinite distances and a strong vacuum yet enough hydrogen that Really Fast ships would destroy themselves bumping into hydrogen atoms?
People need to give up the fiction that we'll ever live anywhere but this God-forsaken rock.
Extrapolating from the current state of the world and considering the pace of historical development, I'd say race to the asteroids will be held between India and China, with so called "western world" playing an important support role. Once there are a few semi-self-sustaining outposts on asteroids, things will start to progress on their own "evolutionarily" by economic pressure. Until then heavy governmental investment is needed, to get this development started.
And when you think of an asteroid habitat, please avoid thinking it in terms of current technology. Instead think of advanced materials that currently are in labs or in theoretical calculations only, think of nanobots and genetically engineered organisms helping in all kinds of ways hard to imagine today (food and energy production, environmental control and maintenance, construction and structural repair...), think of medical advances that sound like magic today (based on real-time DNA analysis of pathogens and patient, using stem cells to regenerate organs and tissue, etc)...
Will plasma transmit sound? I'm guessing not very well...
I'd guess the opposite, as interactions between ions in plasma are a lot easier (delivered through electromagnetic force caused by the electric charge) than interactions between atoms/molecules in neutral gas (delivered through collisions).
We seem to want to look toward space, toward distant planets trying to find even scant evidence of strange, spectacular creatures. And yet ones as strange and spectacular as you can imagine remain undiscovered right here at home.
You wish we want to look towards space. In reality "we" on average want to look towards a TV set or a gaming/internet device.
Fortunately some of us are still looking towards space, while others are also looking into the oceans (as proven by TFA). Even with all the attention wasted on rectangular displays showing imaginary things, or at best irrelevant trivia, we may still have hope.
Not sure if latest/upcoming KDE or Gnome have something similar, but I'd say every Linux DE developer should check out how it works in Windows 7.
It's way old news in the Mac/Linux world. As usual.
Ok. I want to add stuff to system or user environment. In Windows I hit Win-key, type "env" and select "Edit environment variables for your account".
Or I want to edit WLAN settings: win + "net", not found yet, I type more so it says "net w" and select "Manage Wireless Networks".
How do I do that in Gnome? And this is a serious question, 'cos I use Gnome daily, too! (For some reason, when ever I try KDE, I want to stop using it in about 5 minutes... I don't know why, I guess it just somehow manages to always get in the way of doing things the way I'm used to.)
(Also feel free to enlighten how above is done in a Mac. I'm not really interested but somebody else may be.)
Interesting, so you're saying the improvements are basically: a good command line where you only have to type the first few letters for a command, and good short-cut keys so you don't have to use the mouse. That all sounds oddly familiar...
If you're referring to a Unix command line (not sure), then no. The "start menu search" or however it's officially called is quite different. It doesn't search just the path, it matches in the middle of strings too, and it's integrated with mouse (which is handy when actually searching something instead of just rapidly accessing something you already know). Not sure if latest/upcoming KDE or Gnome have something similar, but I'd say every Linux DE developer should check out how it works in Windows 7.
a) Sharing duplicates is not theft of the original b) There are no canons on ships involved.
Sharing duplicates is theft of intellectual property... as long as you accept the basic concept of intellectual property in current international law, anyway.
I'm tired of hearing about electric/hybrid vehicles. Give me something that goes the same distance of a tank of gas, reduce the price of these machines, and then give me a call.
Nah. They'll just raise the price of gas until you'll change your mind. Once you can only afford to fill your tank half full, range of EVs doesn't feel so bad any more.
There is an argument to be made that because of the very physics of the universe that life itself may be not only inevitable but practically guaranteed. This statement is made with consideration of organic chemistry and the pervasiveness with which hydrocarbons not only exist but seem to interact and react to other hydrocarbons.
Or not. Getting the machinery for life together may be easy (meaning, sure to happen given reasonable environment and materials), but it may as well be next to impossible (meaning, it has a just a small chance of happening, even if environment and materials are just right). We just don't know.
Life is guaranteed to have arisen at least once in our universe. And really, that's all we can say with any confidence. We may have independently arisen life in multiple planets and moons in our solar system, or Earth may be the only place with life in the Virgo supercluster. We just don't have the data, neither a complete model of abiogenesis nor clear observations of extraterrestrial life.
a really nice overview of an economic system that would work for the benefit of everyone...
Like some other economic systems that would work for the benefit of everyone, I bet that one has the same fatal flaw: it fails to account for basic human nature. Persons are smart, except those persons that are not, but people are always stupid.
Also, a warning sign of all kinds of crack-pottery is claiming that something untested would work and solve some hard, perhaps even impossible problem in a simple manner. They all fail from the same reason: replacing harsh reality with wishful thinking of some kind.
You joke (and it's funny) but when it comes down to it, piracy preserved this game.
It was for personal use, and I'm sure it was covered by "fair use" even back then.
Naturally this means, that the game is not really preserved until a permission is gained for use or distribution of the material... Until then, any act of preservation not covered by fair use is piracy of course, traditionally an offense punishable by immediate hanging without a trial.
take an existing Qt application, compile and test it first
An existing Qt application to do what, exactly?
To test that it runs. I wasn't trying to imply that many desktop applications would make sense to run on phone screen, especially a phone without keyboard.
Just because most of the core code compiles doesn't mean it's a cakewalk. Any app of any consequence that has its origins in the desktop world does not just drop in to compile for mobile. There are serious problems with missing build dependencies (ie. anything outside Qt itself is a crapshoot), and even more serious problems with having to perform extremely major surgery on the GUI to make it work with the totally non-standard dialog and menu implementation found on Maemo (and presumably everywhere else, and presumably to vary by device too).
Yes, if you want the native look and feel. If you don't, then there's nothing stopping you from making even a traditional QMainWindow application, that runs on desktop and on Symbian and on Maemo/Meego, as long as you account for the different input methods and make sure your application's minimum screen size is small enough for the smallest target display. For the large class of applications that only need point-and-click interaction (eg. all kinds of information browsing), it's trivial to have single source for all targets.
You don't have to start completely from scratch, but it represents an enormous amount of work. I have every expectation that the Symbian-specific diddling that would have to be done vs. the Maemo/MeeGo diddling really means you have to have two compile targets in your code too, with two very distinct ways of managing this that and the other. I haven't developed for Qt on Symbian, so that is speculative, but I've done enough Qt on Maemo to have a very strong sense that even the move to MeeGo is going to require a lot of revamping, and I expect every new device out there is going to require device-specific diddling in many ways.
In many ways, such as? I have a feeling there'll be even less diddling needed than producing cross-platform application for Windows+Linux+Mac with Qt. And in that environment, most diddling I have seen has been because the developer didn't know (or care) about the Qt API to do whatever he did in a platform specific way...
Qt is great, but I don't think Qt is a panacea. Especially not since you can't deploy Qt on Android or iOS phones, which is severely crippling.
iOS, being a closed platfrom, is understandable.
But Android is supposedly an open platform. What stops people from compiling Qt libraries for it? Once there is a wealth of Qt-based mobile apps, how long will it take for there to be Android images with Qt support?
All in all, I think Qt is the fantastic idea that's going to fail, along with Nokia. They seem completely doomed to me, and should probably just start making Android devices.
Could be, but I doubt it. Are you viewing it from a very US-centric point of view, perhaps?
Youkkou makken greatikken harrdwwiikken, bukkut youkkour sooffwakkken ikkis krakkap. Frokkom a ukkuseeer poikkoint okkof viiikkew, Sykkimbian is okkkkay, but dekkevelokkkpers hakketen it. Ikkit is a hekkel to wrikkete for. Mokkove to Akkandroid alreakkidy
FYI: Future of Symbian is Qt. After that, developer mostly doesn't even need to care what the platform is, especially if only targetting touch phones. It's not hell, it's heaven, already now. What I mean is, today you can download and install the Nokia Qt SDK, take an existing Qt application, compile and test it first in the Simulator (phone form factor selectable from menu), then (Windows only for Symbian, I think) hook up your two year old 5800XM to your PC with USB, install Qt packages from Windows Programs menu shortcuts, and compile and deploy the app to run on your phone. It'll stay installed too, so you can easily demo your creation to others even after unhooking the USB.
It's almost like Android already!
Warning: the SDK can be considered "beta quality" still in my experience, at least as far as installation is concerned, so it might, but also it might not "just work". If stupid installation problem crap puts you off, perhaps wait for next release of the SDK...
Of course having Qt doesn't do anything about the Ovi store, but perhaps the new CEO can do the necessary yelling, kicking and whipping to get the stupidities fixed.
I find it interesting that "people not doing their jobs" is a universal problem. That's something that has always bothered me. Unless it's somehow significant in the context of other things, people just aren't interested. I guess it's similar in extraterrestrial alien cultures, if there are any.
30 years seems fair, fewer people would go into the music business if they had no way of providing for their loved ones if they died an untimely death.
How does this sound: Fewer people would go into the "wage slave" business if they had no way of providing for their loved ones if they died an timely death.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually.. I think they know I'm opening it because they've ordered me to do it.
Hmm, yeah, that coull0hgnsi
dont be stupid
cats dont have mind control powers
Preview
backspace backspace
youstupidhuman
youdienow
I don't think my cat uses hearing to detect an opened can of food. I did an experiment once where he was on the ground floor and at the opposite end. I carefully and quietly opened the can and *PifF* he teleported into the room, right by the bowl. I don't know how they do that.
Didn't you know? Your cat uses hearing to hear your thoughts. The sound made by opening the can was irrelevant in your experiment.
“I contend we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”- Stephen F. Roberts
I wonder if that was a smart argument originally, or if it completely missed the point, but I bet many of the atheists don't understand it when they read it.
Better way to put it would be "I contend we are both same kind of believers, even though I'm an atheist and you're not. You have religious faith in the god(s) you know in your heart to exist. So do I."
Though that doesn't yet account for the two groups of atheists, those who have faith that there is no god, and those who just don't have faith in any god.
I just don't see it. I especially don't see how CAD work would benefit from it. Don't you have a main workstation?
Well, that was just a personal example. I don't do CAD work, but I do have CAD drawings done for me, and surprisingly oftenI need to make decisions based on those drawings, or check things based on those drawings. I mean, case in point, just today I had to say on the phone that I don't have the drawings with me, I'll have to get back to you, even though I was sitting in front of an internet-connected computer.
I guess I could convert them to PDF, but not only would that be a lot of work, also normal PDF viewers aren't really very suitable for inspecting that kind of stuff (think of measuring distances in correct scale).
CAD is an excellent example also because almost everything else I use can already be practically stored in the Web. Even if there's no actual web application, having access to files is often enough because there's that standard application available. Not so for CAD stuff.
And about it being useful, have you ever juggled versions of CAD drawings to different people for review by e-mail, and tried to keep track of different versions? It's quite a hassle I can tell you, and a hassle computers should take care of almost automatically. Once the technology (HTML5, even low-end internet connection speeds improving, "Full HD" resolution becoming the standard minimum, touch screens becoming more common) advance a bit more, and more of the designers in the field will be young enough to have grown up with the Internet, the cloud is going to transform the CAD field. It will do pretty much exactly the same thing as DVCS (like git) are doing to SW engineering right now. There's just no going back, if you do any kind of collaboration (and every CAD drawing usually has at least five parties: the customer, the designer, the reviewer, the print shop doing the paper "blueprints", and the one doing the practical work).
Of course it'll be very long time before the actual designer CAD application will go to the cloud, but it will be seamlessly integrated with the cloud so that the files will be viewable in web browser, and in version control in the cloud.
It seems to me that people have totally forgotten how to run things locally. Did computers exist before the web?
Well, data is moving / has moved to the cloud and accessible from anywhere, so the applications to use that data need to be too. And when you just *have* to work locally (for example when files are too big for bandwidth, or when there's no suitable online application), it becomes apparent that "locally" is not so good. I can't count how many times I have wished an online application support for DWG (Autodesk cad format), for example. Being tied to a specific machine with the correct software is a pain!
app prices
What is different from Maemo than Android, iOS, or WinPhone 7 (when released)? The OS vendors aren't the ones controlling the prices, the developers are.
I think he was talking about "apt-get install packagename" type applications. In that world, the price is pretty much set in stone by the license, usually GPL, and for end-users is effectively zero no matter how you measure it.
"Field of rocks" a threat to solar panel installations? You don't quite realize how big and empty space is, do you? :-)
Once there are a few semi-self-sustaining outposts on asteroids
Supported by *what*?
Instead think of advanced materials that currently are in labs or in theoretical calculations only
All that high-tech wizardry needs a serious support infrastructure, which they won't have.
Not only that, but it appears that mammalian embryos need gravity to develop, and there's not enough gravity on any of the asteroids.
What you mean "supported by what"? Supported by local production of essentials, probably mostly using solar energy and locally available matter.
I was talking about advanced materials that are needed in small enough amounts to be brought from earth, or simple enough to produce so they don't need "serious support infrastructure". I mean, that's kind of a given, materials that can't be used aren't worth wasting much thought on... Besides, it's not far fetched to speculate that mass production of fullerenes (or some other advanced material) using asteroid material and taking advantage of microgravity and hard vacuum might actually be a profitable business at some point in future.
Why would semi-self-sufficient outposts be concerned with reproduction, other than making sure it doesn't happen? Sounds rather like a useful extra layer of birth control to me... However, from your linked article, it sounds very much like gravity isn't needed for a very long time, just for a few crucial first divisions. Providing enough gravity for that amount of time would be trivial for in-vitro fertilization, and doesn't take a very large rotating structure to provide it even for natural fertilization.
However, semi-self-sufficient by definition will get supply ships from earth. There's no point in trying to raise children in space until there are real colonies, as there would be a long queue of qualified, experienced people wanting to go.
Fortunately some of us are still looking towards space
Fortunately, because you like hard radiation, needing to carry *everything* with you, effectively infinite distances and a strong vacuum yet enough hydrogen that Really Fast ships would destroy themselves bumping into hydrogen atoms?
People need to give up the fiction that we'll ever live anywhere but this God-forsaken rock.
Extrapolating from the current state of the world and considering the pace of historical development, I'd say race to the asteroids will be held between India and China, with so called "western world" playing an important support role. Once there are a few semi-self-sustaining outposts on asteroids, things will start to progress on their own "evolutionarily" by economic pressure. Until then heavy governmental investment is needed, to get this development started.
And when you think of an asteroid habitat, please avoid thinking it in terms of current technology. Instead think of advanced materials that currently are in labs or in theoretical calculations only, think of nanobots and genetically engineered organisms helping in all kinds of ways hard to imagine today (food and energy production, environmental control and maintenance, construction and structural repair...), think of medical advances that sound like magic today (based on real-time DNA analysis of pathogens and patient, using stem cells to regenerate organs and tissue, etc)...
Will plasma transmit sound? I'm guessing not very well...
I'd guess the opposite, as interactions between ions in plasma are a lot easier (delivered through electromagnetic force caused by the electric charge) than interactions between atoms/molecules in neutral gas (delivered through collisions).
We seem to want to look toward space, toward distant planets trying to find even scant evidence of strange, spectacular creatures. And yet ones as strange and spectacular as you can imagine remain undiscovered right here at home.
You wish we want to look towards space. In reality "we" on average want to look towards a TV set or a gaming/internet device.
Fortunately some of us are still looking towards space, while others are also looking into the oceans (as proven by TFA). Even with all the attention wasted on rectangular displays showing imaginary things, or at best irrelevant trivia, we may still have hope.
Not sure if latest/upcoming KDE or Gnome have something similar, but I'd say every Linux DE developer should check out how it works in Windows 7.
It's way old news in the Mac/Linux world. As usual.
Ok. I want to add stuff to system or user environment. In Windows I hit Win-key, type "env" and select "Edit environment variables for your account".
Or I want to edit WLAN settings: win + "net", not found yet, I type more so it says "net w" and select "Manage Wireless Networks".
How do I do that in Gnome? And this is a serious question, 'cos I use Gnome daily, too! (For some reason, when ever I try KDE, I want to stop using it in about 5 minutes... I don't know why, I guess it just somehow manages to always get in the way of doing things the way I'm used to.)
(Also feel free to enlighten how above is done in a Mac. I'm not really interested but somebody else may be.)
Interesting, so you're saying the improvements are basically: a good command line where you only have to type the first few letters for a command, and good short-cut keys so you don't have to use the mouse. That all sounds oddly familiar ...
If you're referring to a Unix command line (not sure), then no. The "start menu search" or however it's officially called is quite different. It doesn't search just the path, it matches in the middle of strings too, and it's integrated with mouse (which is handy when actually searching something instead of just rapidly accessing something you already know). Not sure if latest/upcoming KDE or Gnome have something similar, but I'd say every Linux DE developer should check out how it works in Windows 7.
a) Sharing duplicates is not theft of the original
b) There are no canons on ships involved.
Sharing duplicates is theft of intellectual property... as long as you accept the basic concept of intellectual property in current international law, anyway.
But but ... all those Hollywood movies told me there's honour among thieves!
But there is. Thieves don't let fellow thieves use non-pirated software! That would be just... unethical!
I'm tired of hearing about electric/hybrid vehicles. Give me something that goes the same distance of a tank of gas, reduce the price of these machines, and then give me a call.
Nah. They'll just raise the price of gas until you'll change your mind. Once you can only afford to fill your tank half full, range of EVs doesn't feel so bad any more.
because outrage at government spending gives Slashbots a hard-on.
Great free alternative to the little blue pill
Well, not free... It's all paid by the government, that is the people who pay taxes. There's no free blue pill.
What is free is gloating over government spending in other countries...
There is an argument to be made that because of the very physics of the universe that life itself may be not only inevitable but practically guaranteed. This statement is made with consideration of organic chemistry and the pervasiveness with which hydrocarbons not only exist but seem to interact and react to other hydrocarbons.
Or not. Getting the machinery for life together may be easy (meaning, sure to happen given reasonable environment and materials), but it may as well be next to impossible (meaning, it has a just a small chance of happening, even if environment and materials are just right). We just don't know.
Life is guaranteed to have arisen at least once in our universe. And really, that's all we can say with any confidence. We may have independently arisen life in multiple planets and moons in our solar system, or Earth may be the only place with life in the Virgo supercluster. We just don't have the data, neither a complete model of abiogenesis nor clear observations of extraterrestrial life.
a really nice overview of an economic system that would work for the benefit of everyone...
Like some other economic systems that would work for the benefit of everyone, I bet that one has the same fatal flaw: it fails to account for basic human nature. Persons are smart, except those persons that are not, but people are always stupid.
Also, a warning sign of all kinds of crack-pottery is claiming that something untested would work and solve some hard, perhaps even impossible problem in a simple manner. They all fail from the same reason: replacing harsh reality with wishful thinking of some kind.
You joke (and it's funny) but when it comes down to it, piracy preserved this game.
It was for personal use, and I'm sure it was covered by "fair use" even back then.
Naturally this means, that the game is not really preserved until a permission is gained for use or distribution of the material... Until then, any act of preservation not covered by fair use is piracy of course, traditionally an offense punishable by immediate hanging without a trial.
take an existing Qt application, compile and test it first
An existing Qt application to do what, exactly?
To test that it runs. I wasn't trying to imply that many desktop applications would make sense to run on phone screen, especially a phone without keyboard.
Just because most of the core code compiles doesn't mean it's a cakewalk. Any app of any consequence that has its origins in the desktop world does not just drop in to compile for mobile. There are serious problems with missing build dependencies (ie. anything outside Qt itself is a crapshoot), and even more serious problems with having to perform extremely major surgery on the GUI to make it work with the totally non-standard dialog and menu implementation found on Maemo (and presumably everywhere else, and presumably to vary by device too).
Yes, if you want the native look and feel. If you don't, then there's nothing stopping you from making even a traditional QMainWindow application, that runs on desktop and on Symbian and on Maemo/Meego, as long as you account for the different input methods and make sure your application's minimum screen size is small enough for the smallest target display. For the large class of applications that only need point-and-click interaction (eg. all kinds of information browsing), it's trivial to have single source for all targets.
You don't have to start completely from scratch, but it represents an enormous amount of work. I have every expectation that the Symbian-specific diddling that would have to be done vs. the Maemo/MeeGo diddling really means you have to have two compile targets in your code too, with two very distinct ways of managing this that and the other. I haven't developed for Qt on Symbian, so that is speculative, but I've done enough Qt on Maemo to have a very strong sense that even the move to MeeGo is going to require a lot of revamping, and I expect every new device out there is going to require device-specific diddling in many ways.
In many ways, such as? I have a feeling there'll be even less diddling needed than producing cross-platform application for Windows+Linux+Mac with Qt. And in that environment, most diddling I have seen has been because the developer didn't know (or care) about the Qt API to do whatever he did in a platform specific way...
Qt is great, but I don't think Qt is a panacea. Especially not since you can't deploy Qt on Android or iOS phones, which is severely crippling.
iOS, being a closed platfrom, is understandable.
But Android is supposedly an open platform. What stops people from compiling Qt libraries for it? Once there is a wealth of Qt-based mobile apps, how long will it take for there to be Android images with Qt support?
All in all, I think Qt is the fantastic idea that's going to fail, along with Nokia. They seem completely doomed to me, and should probably just start making Android devices.
Could be, but I doubt it. Are you viewing it from a very US-centric point of view, perhaps?
I'll write it in finnish, maybe you'll understand
Youkkou makken greatikken harrdwwiikken, bukkut youkkour sooffwakkken ikkis krakkap. Frokkom a ukkuseeer poikkoint okkof viiikkew, Sykkimbian is okkkkay, but dekkevelokkkpers hakketen it. Ikkit is a hekkel to wrikkete for. Mokkove to Akkandroid alreakkidy
FYI: Future of Symbian is Qt. After that, developer mostly doesn't even need to care what the platform is, especially if only targetting touch phones. It's not hell, it's heaven, already now. What I mean is, today you can download and install the Nokia Qt SDK, take an existing Qt application, compile and test it first in the Simulator (phone form factor selectable from menu), then (Windows only for Symbian, I think) hook up your two year old 5800XM to your PC with USB, install Qt packages from Windows Programs menu shortcuts, and compile and deploy the app to run on your phone. It'll stay installed too, so you can easily demo your creation to others even after unhooking the USB.
It's almost like Android already!
Warning: the SDK can be considered "beta quality" still in my experience, at least as far as installation is concerned, so it might, but also it might not "just work". If stupid installation problem crap puts you off, perhaps wait for next release of the SDK...
Of course having Qt doesn't do anything about the Ovi store, but perhaps the new CEO can do the necessary yelling, kicking and whipping to get the stupidities fixed.
I find it interesting that "people not doing their jobs" is a universal problem. That's something that has always bothered me. Unless it's somehow significant in the context of other things, people just aren't interested. I guess it's similar in extraterrestrial alien cultures, if there are any.
FTFY ;-)
I don't understand. How do cars or LOCs fit into this analogy?
30 years seems fair, fewer people would go into the music business if they had no way of providing for their loved ones if they died an untimely death.
How does this sound: Fewer people would go into the "wage slave" business if they had no way of providing for their loved ones if they died an timely death.