Well, let me help you seeing that problem then. I'm using SUSE Linux 64bit and 64bit Chrome to browse the web. There's a wrapper to use the 32-bit Flash plugin and the latest Flash (which is on par with the Windows version) works without problem for me. You're right Adobe is not really playing nice with 64bit Linux, but in practice there's little problem.
On the other hand, SUSE is probably the best supported Linux distribution for Moonlight, yet Moonlight lags so much behind that there is more Silverlight content that doesn't work than content that does. That is very real practical problem for me. I know I'm a minority being a Linux user, but for me this is a clear reason to hate Silverlight.
If Microsoft would release a Silverlight version themselves for Linux, that would be on par with the Windows version, I would complain a lot less.
Finally, I agree Flash is also an evil, as is Silverlight. But I can live with such an "evil" if it solves practical problems for me. Flash however is already all around, and Silverlight fortunately isn't yet, and two evils are certainly worse than one.
It's the latter. You can just use web controls as part of a native application. Basically you can just create a native application window, and render its entire contents using HTML/CSS. Or just a part of the window if you like. And all JavaScript code in those web parts can just call back to your native code where needed.
And the other way around is also possible. You can embed native controls into your web view just like how you embed a Flash object into a web page. And again, there's no problem in communicating between native code and JavaScript. Though if you want to pass complex data structures you will likely want to pass those as JSON objects (which in turn can be easily mapped to and from QVariantMaps, if you Google around you will find plenty solutions for that).
In a world that's moving fast from native application to web-based applications, I believe their bet in integrating WebKit is an excellent choice.
At my company (a web company) we had to choose a platform for our native client and basically the choice boiled down to Mozilla's XUL platform, Adobe AIR and (just in time) Qt with WebKit. We decided for the latter and do not regret it!
While QtWebKit has a lot of rough edges in Qt 4.4, I believe there is a *lot* of potential, especially given the huge improvements they made in that area in Qt 4.5. JavaScript has seen a huge speed bump due to the SquirrelFish engine, you can expose C++ objects to JavaScript (already in 4.4), and with some work you can even connect native Qt signals to JavaScript methods, there now is support for HTML5 and CSS3 transformations. Without exaggeration, this really is the best of both worlds.
And now with the LGPL license option it's even available to about everyone who wants it. Good job!
Has Microsoft done some not cool stuff? Sure...I guess. At the same time, Bill Gates created an excellent company from the ground up, arguably created an entire industry (which, if you work with computers, you can thank him for your job), and continuously made the company profitable over and over again.
You already say its arguable that he created an entire industry, and it is. I believe this industry would have existed perfectly without them. And working for a web company I can tell you that Microsoft is actively holding back the industry you claim they created.
And of course Bill Gates is supporting strong IP. Duh. You would too if you had that kind of money and industry to protect.
So the richest man in the world is lobbying for laws that will make him even richer at the cost of others. And now you claim we should feel empathy for him?? To me, it's kinda like the definition of greed...
This MEGA-GPL license could suck up GPL code, but could not give back to the GPL project without the original project becoming MEGA-GPL. If this sounds far-fetched, the same scenario already exists with GPLv2 vs GPLv3.
The GPL actually does not allow this, since no
"MEGA-GPL" license would be allowed to impose additional restrictions on top of the GPL. This is explicitly stated in the GPL.
The only reason most GPLv2 can be converted to GPLv3 (which does have some additional restrictions) is because most GPLv2 released software explicitly states that anyone is allowed to choose whether to use GPLv2 or any later GPL version for redistribution (or because its original authors explicitly decide to do so). This is not required however, and for instance the Linux kernel does not do this. So no, noone can relicense the Linux kernel under MEGA-GPL, or even GPLv3.
Re:Large uptick in Qt usage?
on
Qt Becomes LGPL
·
· Score: 3, Informative
Then you've not been listening. Many don't like the noteworthy long start up times of Qt apps compared to say Gtk.
Long start-up times have been fixed ever since Qt4 was released quite a while ago.
Many don't like the need for obtuse tools like SIP.
I've never used SIP myself, but it's that tool for generating bindings for other languages, right? So that's only required if you're generating your own bindings. And even then I fail to see how that's worse than writing the bindings by hand...
I am so sick of this analogy, as it's completely inaccurate. Programming languages, at least full featured languages, are a whole set of tools, not a single tool. Comparing Java to C is more like comparing Craftsman to Snap-on, different brands of tools but they can both be used to do the same thing. If you can give you mechanics a single tool that can be used in all their tasks, like a sonic screwdriver, then do it. If the language isn't full featured, or cover all your needs, then don't use it.
I agree the analogy was flawed. Yours is as well however. Frameworks and languages cannot be mixed and matched like mechanical tool sets can. For example, if Craftsman's screwdrivers are far superior, while Snap-on's wrenches are far superior, you know where to get your screwdrivers and where to get your wrenches. However, you cannot mix C++'s far superior template system with Java's far superior threading model (just to make an example, not saying it is so). Therefore you would pick C++ if the templating is a decisive factor, whereas you would pick Java if it was threading. Now you can see how always forcing everyone to use the same language may severly limit productivity of some.
This is exactly what you need to do if you want to guarantee that you have to continue with the team you have or hiring nothing but experienced senior developers. Keep the number of tools simple and you can have a small number of leads and many interns to do the same amount of work with a much higher over all quality and considerably less cost.
In the company I work for, seniors are a lot less expensive than interns (though their salaries are much higher). Interns need guidance, taking away productivity from other seniors. Interns make fuckups, which again cost precious senior's time. Not to mention a senior gets done way, way more in the same amount of time an intern does. Therefore yes, we are mostly focused on "hiring nothing but experienced senior developers", and we believe it's a good thing to do.
If anyone thinks that hiring computer scientist's to do anything other than research and theory is a good idea, you should kick that manager to the curb.
Good point. And I think I should elaborate my statement a bit. While the example given is indeed something that stood out to me, I would definitely not consider myself someone who prefers all muslims to be pushed over the border. What does really bother me though, is that apparently we have an immigration policy that allows people who literally wish to undermine our society to come over to our country.
And how's that worse than letting in any random person with or without job, with or without education and with or without any good intent towards the host country?
I'm from the Netherlands, and I think the situation here is pretty much comparable to what the GP described. The oddest thing is that we have imams who preach hate toward every non-muslim and they are tolerated for freedom of religion, whereas people suggesting to move any such imams back to the countries they came from are accused of racism. So much for integration of immigrants...
This makes no sense. You're assuming dropping the LTS term will make it more complex for non-technical users, but non-technical users don't care about the LTS term. The only people that care about the LTS term are people that need support, like IT departments, people who are not that easily confused. Really, non-technical people don't care about LTS, don't care whether their operating system carries an LTS label, and what they don't care about, they're not confused about, they just want it to work.
Maybe you want to take a look at Hyves (www.hyves.nl). It has all those things you like (the elegant looking part may be debatable, but it's sure nicely customizable while not as messy as MySpace). Truth is though, there are mostly Dutch people around there:)
What relevance does a document standard have to an organisation that cannot convert all it's documents to it?
That's a non-issue. The document standard does not need to have any legacy options, as long as the converter understands the legacy documents and can convert them to the new standard. At this point it makes a lot more sense to make the document standard flexible enough so that it can represent all old documents natively, without putting all kinds of deprecated hacks into the new standard.
i'm sorry, i was not specifically referring to the arrested citizen to which indeed your "guilty until proven innocent" statement perfectly applies.
i was referring to the question "If I don't have anything to hide, why do they need to watch me?" and the follow up comments in general. i was trying to say it's just natural people watch you and you can earn their trust by being open to them. no need to worry too much over why they watch you.
that's a way you could put it, yes, but it's a bit of a paranoid point of view. it's just common sense that what's not known should be feared, for you do not know its danger. being open towards other people shows them you put trust in them, and in return you gain trust as they learn to know you. saying you have nothing to hide, yet hiding yourself from other people is not a good way to earn trust. it's not directly that you're guilty of something because you hide something, it just makes you unknown and thus feared to some extent.
I'd also love to see more wide-spread support for XUL, the only trouble is that it's a Mozilla proprietary technology and a bit of a moving target, making it very tough to support fully in other browsers. IMHO Mozilla should do with XUL what OpenOffice.org did with their file format: open it up for standardization so that everyone can give input on it and let it become the standard user-interface language among (open-source) browsers.
A very good illustration was made by David Wheeler at LinuxWorld about the importance of open standards, and it's probably even easier to understand for non-techies:
[...] He went on to show the audience, through another
word picture describing a 1904 fire in Baltimore, how open
standards can prevent unhealthy dependence on one vendor.
"Firefighters were called in from all the surrounding states,"
Wheeler said. "But all they could do was stand and watch the
building burn, because their firehoses would not fit on the fire
hydrants." A standard fire hose coupler could have prevented much
of the destruction. [...]
Which desktop Linux distro? Supposing, hypothetically, that I wanted to switch...
Doesn't matter that much really. Of course you could tweak the hell out of your system, you could choose a light-weight distro, you could choose a light-weight window manager, but my experience is that with a sane choice of applications you can get it working pretty well pretty easily.
I have an old laptop for work. It is a P3 800MHz with 128MB RAM. I simply loaded a 1-CD install of SUSE Linux 10.0 with KDE on it, and it works pretty well. I have just stripped it from some unused services and use Konqueror and KOffice by default, because Firefox and OpenOffice.org are slow on the machine. I have them installed in case I really need them, but they are slow. Konqueror generally starts in just a few seconds, and KOffice takes about 10. Firefox takes half a minute though, and OpenOffice.org takes like two. Now, with 256MB RAM, any distro will be fine out of the box, but you may have to perform similar tricks to make it actually faster than Windows.
I can confirm this. At our (small) company we have four main servers. Two Windows servers, one Novell 5.1 server and one Linux server. One Windows server is an RDP Terminal Server, the other Windows server is a mail server and file server. The Novell server only does file and printer serving. The Linux server is our DNS server, runs our custom document management system, runs Kolab for shared calendars and todo's, also does file sharing over both Samba and FTP, and it also serves Subversion repositories and is used for nightly builds and unit testing of our software. In fact, the job of the Windows mail server could easily be handled by the Linux server as well and even the Novell server could be deprecated. It's just that these things always have been on their own servers and well, don't fix it as long as it's not broken.
True, but on the same page where the buddy icons are shown is a note about one of the Google Talk developers saying AIM compatibility is coming soon. So it's just the Slashdot summary that messes up (as usual).
Re:This wouldn't surprise me....
on
iCell in the Works?
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
personally, I'd prefer they be seperate -- but that's me. It's kind of difficult to use your phone while using your iPod, isn't it?
Isn't that an advantage? If you're listening to your iPod, you might not hear your phone ringing. So, if they are the same device, the music can automatically stop when you start calling or an incoming call arrives. Makes sense to me...
Just to your comment about Hussein harboring/financing terrorists, how about the $25,000 grants Saddam offered for Palestinian suicide bombings, or about the shelter Iraque gave to Palestinian terrorists like Abu Abbas? Seems like a clear signal of supporting terrorism to me.
100,000 personnel over to Firefox and Thunderbird (70,000 and 45,000 respectively)
It was just badly phrased in the summary. The department has 100,000 people working for them, which use a total of 70,000 workstations. Of those workstations, all are being converted to Firefox, and 45,000 of them will also get Thunderbird.
I can understand you don't like this situation, but you also have to realize it could've been avoided if Microsoft had at least taken a different approach towards bundling these type of applications. It's true users expect these types of functionality and it is a dream for application developers to be able to rely on a preinstalled component to handle the playing of video's. However, it went wrong because Microsoft just simply preinstalled their own programs, forced OEM's to use their programs and no one else's programs and implicitly forced application developers to come to rely on their programs (I believe this is true for both Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player, and it might become true for MSN Messenger as well). That exactly is how they abused their monopoly. If instead they had defined an open API that they themselves had implemented with Windows Media Player, but for which they had allowed competitors to implement the same API as well. If they had not forced OEM's to install WMP, but would have allowed the installation of other players that implemented the API. Then we would have had a situation where Microsoft could bundle WMP, but where OEM's still had the freedom to install other players, where competitors would be given a fair chance to compete and where users could freely choose without loosing the integration between applications they've become used to. Had Microsoft chosen an open approach towards offering this type of functionality rather than pushing their competitors of the edge, we wouldn't have the mess we have now.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, let me help you seeing that problem then. I'm using SUSE Linux 64bit and 64bit Chrome to browse the web. There's a wrapper to use the 32-bit Flash plugin and the latest Flash (which is on par with the Windows version) works without problem for me. You're right Adobe is not really playing nice with 64bit Linux, but in practice there's little problem.
On the other hand, SUSE is probably the best supported Linux distribution for Moonlight, yet Moonlight lags so much behind that there is more Silverlight content that doesn't work than content that does. That is very real practical problem for me. I know I'm a minority being a Linux user, but for me this is a clear reason to hate Silverlight.
If Microsoft would release a Silverlight version themselves for Linux, that would be on par with the Windows version, I would complain a lot less.
Finally, I agree Flash is also an evil, as is Silverlight. But I can live with such an "evil" if it solves practical problems for me. Flash however is already all around, and Silverlight fortunately isn't yet, and two evils are certainly worse than one.
It's the latter. You can just use web controls as part of a native application. Basically you can just create a native application window, and render its entire contents using HTML/CSS. Or just a part of the window if you like. And all JavaScript code in those web parts can just call back to your native code where needed.
And the other way around is also possible. You can embed native controls into your web view just like how you embed a Flash object into a web page. And again, there's no problem in communicating between native code and JavaScript. Though if you want to pass complex data structures you will likely want to pass those as JSON objects (which in turn can be easily mapped to and from QVariantMaps, if you Google around you will find plenty solutions for that).
In a world that's moving fast from native application to web-based applications, I believe their bet in integrating WebKit is an excellent choice.
At my company (a web company) we had to choose a platform for our native client and basically the choice boiled down to Mozilla's XUL platform, Adobe AIR and (just in time) Qt with WebKit. We decided for the latter and do not regret it!
While QtWebKit has a lot of rough edges in Qt 4.4, I believe there is a *lot* of potential, especially given the huge improvements they made in that area in Qt 4.5. JavaScript has seen a huge speed bump due to the SquirrelFish engine, you can expose C++ objects to JavaScript (already in 4.4), and with some work you can even connect native Qt signals to JavaScript methods, there now is support for HTML5 and CSS3 transformations. Without exaggeration, this really is the best of both worlds.
And now with the LGPL license option it's even available to about everyone who wants it. Good job!
Has Microsoft done some not cool stuff? Sure...I guess. At the same time, Bill Gates created an excellent company from the ground up, arguably created an entire industry (which, if you work with computers, you can thank him for your job), and continuously made the company profitable over and over again.
You already say its arguable that he created an entire industry, and it is. I believe this industry would have existed perfectly without them. And working for a web company I can tell you that Microsoft is actively holding back the industry you claim they created.
And of course Bill Gates is supporting strong IP. Duh. You would too if you had that kind of money and industry to protect.
So the richest man in the world is lobbying for laws that will make him even richer at the cost of others. And now you claim we should feel empathy for him?? To me, it's kinda like the definition of greed...
This MEGA-GPL license could suck up GPL code, but could not give back to the GPL project without the original project becoming MEGA-GPL. If this sounds far-fetched, the same scenario already exists with GPLv2 vs GPLv3.
The GPL actually does not allow this, since no "MEGA-GPL" license would be allowed to impose additional restrictions on top of the GPL. This is explicitly stated in the GPL.
The only reason most GPLv2 can be converted to GPLv3 (which does have some additional restrictions) is because most GPLv2 released software explicitly states that anyone is allowed to choose whether to use GPLv2 or any later GPL version for redistribution (or because its original authors explicitly decide to do so). This is not required however, and for instance the Linux kernel does not do this. So no, noone can relicense the Linux kernel under MEGA-GPL, or even GPLv3.
Then you've not been listening. Many don't like the noteworthy long start up times of Qt apps compared to say Gtk.
Long start-up times have been fixed ever since Qt4 was released quite a while ago.
Many don't like the need for obtuse tools like SIP.
I've never used SIP myself, but it's that tool for generating bindings for other languages, right? So that's only required if you're generating your own bindings. And even then I fail to see how that's worse than writing the bindings by hand...
I am so sick of this analogy, as it's completely inaccurate. Programming languages, at least full featured languages, are a whole set of tools, not a single tool. Comparing Java to C is more like comparing Craftsman to Snap-on, different brands of tools but they can both be used to do the same thing. If you can give you mechanics a single tool that can be used in all their tasks, like a sonic screwdriver, then do it. If the language isn't full featured, or cover all your needs, then don't use it.
I agree the analogy was flawed. Yours is as well however. Frameworks and languages cannot be mixed and matched like mechanical tool sets can. For example, if Craftsman's screwdrivers are far superior, while Snap-on's wrenches are far superior, you know where to get your screwdrivers and where to get your wrenches. However, you cannot mix C++'s far superior template system with Java's far superior threading model (just to make an example, not saying it is so). Therefore you would pick C++ if the templating is a decisive factor, whereas you would pick Java if it was threading. Now you can see how always forcing everyone to use the same language may severly limit productivity of some.
This is exactly what you need to do if you want to guarantee that you have to continue with the team you have or hiring nothing but experienced senior developers. Keep the number of tools simple and you can have a small number of leads and many interns to do the same amount of work with a much higher over all quality and considerably less cost.
In the company I work for, seniors are a lot less expensive than interns (though their salaries are much higher). Interns need guidance, taking away productivity from other seniors. Interns make fuckups, which again cost precious senior's time. Not to mention a senior gets done way, way more in the same amount of time an intern does. Therefore yes, we are mostly focused on "hiring nothing but experienced senior developers", and we believe it's a good thing to do.
If anyone thinks that hiring computer scientist's to do anything other than research and theory is a good idea, you should kick that manager to the curb.
Agreed. ;)
Given that the Trolltech GPL exception applies to more licenses than just the GPL, including the Apache License (see: http://doc.trolltech.com/main-snapshot/license-gpl-exceptions.html), yes it is legal.
Good point. And I think I should elaborate my statement a bit. While the example given is indeed something that stood out to me, I would definitely not consider myself someone who prefers all muslims to be pushed over the border. What does really bother me though, is that apparently we have an immigration policy that allows people who literally wish to undermine our society to come over to our country.
And how's that worse than letting in any random person with or without job, with or without education and with or without any good intent towards the host country?
I'm from the Netherlands, and I think the situation here is pretty much comparable to what the GP described. The oddest thing is that we have imams who preach hate toward every non-muslim and they are tolerated for freedom of religion, whereas people suggesting to move any such imams back to the countries they came from are accused of racism. So much for integration of immigrants...
The problem though is the ones that need to appeal are the NB's, which are the same ones that also had the final say in the Yes votes.
Can't disagree I really hope there will be appeals as well.
This makes no sense. You're assuming dropping the LTS term will make it more complex for non-technical users, but non-technical users don't care about the LTS term. The only people that care about the LTS term are people that need support, like IT departments, people who are not that easily confused. Really, non-technical people don't care about LTS, don't care whether their operating system carries an LTS label, and what they don't care about, they're not confused about, they just want it to work.
Maybe you want to take a look at Hyves (www.hyves.nl). It has all those things you like (the elegant looking part may be debatable, but it's sure nicely customizable while not as messy as MySpace). Truth is though, there are mostly Dutch people around there :)
That's a non-issue. The document standard does not need to have any legacy options, as long as the converter understands the legacy documents and can convert them to the new standard. At this point it makes a lot more sense to make the document standard flexible enough so that it can represent all old documents natively, without putting all kinds of deprecated hacks into the new standard.
i'm sorry, i was not specifically referring to the arrested citizen to which indeed your "guilty until proven innocent" statement perfectly applies.
i was referring to the question "If I don't have anything to hide, why do they need to watch me?" and the follow up comments in general. i was trying to say it's just natural people watch you and you can earn their trust by being open to them. no need to worry too much over why they watch you.
that's a way you could put it, yes, but it's a bit of a paranoid point of view. it's just common sense that what's not known should be feared, for you do not know its danger. being open towards other people shows them you put trust in them, and in return you gain trust as they learn to know you. saying you have nothing to hide, yet hiding yourself from other people is not a good way to earn trust. it's not directly that you're guilty of something because you hide something, it just makes you unknown and thus feared to some extent.
I'd also love to see more wide-spread support for XUL, the only trouble is that it's a Mozilla proprietary technology and a bit of a moving target, making it very tough to support fully in other browsers. IMHO Mozilla should do with XUL what OpenOffice.org did with their file format: open it up for standardization so that everyone can give input on it and let it become the standard user-interface language among (open-source) browsers.
A very good illustration was made by David Wheeler at LinuxWorld about the importance of open standards, and it's probably even easier to understand for non-techies:
Which desktop Linux distro? Supposing, hypothetically, that I wanted to switch...
Doesn't matter that much really. Of course you could tweak the hell out of your system, you could choose a light-weight distro, you could choose a light-weight window manager, but my experience is that with a sane choice of applications you can get it working pretty well pretty easily.
I have an old laptop for work. It is a P3 800MHz with 128MB RAM. I simply loaded a 1-CD install of SUSE Linux 10.0 with KDE on it, and it works pretty well. I have just stripped it from some unused services and use Konqueror and KOffice by default, because Firefox and OpenOffice.org are slow on the machine. I have them installed in case I really need them, but they are slow. Konqueror generally starts in just a few seconds, and KOffice takes about 10. Firefox takes half a minute though, and OpenOffice.org takes like two. Now, with 256MB RAM, any distro will be fine out of the box, but you may have to perform similar tricks to make it actually faster than Windows.
I can confirm this. At our (small) company we have four main servers. Two Windows servers, one Novell 5.1 server and one Linux server. One Windows server is an RDP Terminal Server, the other Windows server is a mail server and file server. The Novell server only does file and printer serving. The Linux server is our DNS server, runs our custom document management system, runs Kolab for shared calendars and todo's, also does file sharing over both Samba and FTP, and it also serves Subversion repositories and is used for nightly builds and unit testing of our software. In fact, the job of the Windows mail server could easily be handled by the Linux server as well and even the Novell server could be deprecated. It's just that these things always have been on their own servers and well, don't fix it as long as it's not broken.
True, but on the same page where the buddy icons are shown is a note about one of the Google Talk developers saying AIM compatibility is coming soon. So it's just the Slashdot summary that messes up (as usual).
personally, I'd prefer they be seperate -- but that's me. It's kind of difficult to use your phone while using your iPod, isn't it?
Isn't that an advantage? If you're listening to your iPod, you might not hear your phone ringing. So, if they are the same device, the music can automatically stop when you start calling or an incoming call arrives. Makes sense to me...
Just to your comment about Hussein harboring/financing terrorists, how about the $25,000 grants Saddam offered for Palestinian suicide bombings, or about the shelter Iraque gave to Palestinian terrorists like Abu Abbas? Seems like a clear signal of supporting terrorism to me.
100,000 personnel over to Firefox and Thunderbird (70,000 and 45,000 respectively)
It was just badly phrased in the summary. The department has 100,000 people working for them, which use a total of 70,000 workstations. Of those workstations, all are being converted to Firefox, and 45,000 of them will also get Thunderbird.
I can understand you don't like this situation, but you also have to realize it could've been avoided if Microsoft had at least taken a different approach towards bundling these type of applications. It's true users expect these types of functionality and it is a dream for application developers to be able to rely on a preinstalled component to handle the playing of video's. However, it went wrong because Microsoft just simply preinstalled their own programs, forced OEM's to use their programs and no one else's programs and implicitly forced application developers to come to rely on their programs (I believe this is true for both Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player, and it might become true for MSN Messenger as well). That exactly is how they abused their monopoly. If instead they had defined an open API that they themselves had implemented with Windows Media Player, but for which they had allowed competitors to implement the same API as well. If they had not forced OEM's to install WMP, but would have allowed the installation of other players that implemented the API. Then we would have had a situation where Microsoft could bundle WMP, but where OEM's still had the freedom to install other players, where competitors would be given a fair chance to compete and where users could freely choose without loosing the integration between applications they've become used to. Had Microsoft chosen an open approach towards offering this type of functionality rather than pushing their competitors of the edge, we wouldn't have the mess we have now.