I pretty much live and breathe the technologies that make up the so-called Web services movement. I even co-author a column on WS on IBM developerWorks. Yet, I don't mind saying that in all likelihood, Web services will turn out to be but a round joke.
To the extent that SOAP is a rich messaging protocol, and operates where EDI, MQ, JMS and the like used to, it will probably do very well because of the flexibility and interop XML gives it.
But to the extent that it turns into the sort of rot that makes up.NET (and the Web services technologies of many other vendors), it is merely than a more bloated DCOM than DCOM; a more obtuse CORBA than CORBA. The idea of implementing high-transaction RPC over HTTP, using XML in the payload and adopting a protocol without standard primitives for sequencing, transactions, security, etc., is so ridiculous that I can only attribute its current credit to the same pundits who declared that Java applets would take over the world.
Web services based on RPC primitives have no techical fundamentals despite the media furore, and it will soon be proved that even within the sphere of Microsoft technologies, WS implementations will not be able to achieve the interoperability and scalability required to become a serious presence on the Internet. The funny thing is that one of the artefacts of the slightly more open Microsoft these days is that you can go to any XML/Web services conference and hear Microsoft reps openly admit these difficulties.
There must be much chuckling in Redmond. They say "boo: Web services" and all their arch-nemesis open-source weenies come down with acute anxiety disorder.
Do relax. XML is the future of the Internet, and open-source rules XML. Web services haven't even *begun* to prove themselves. Go to www.xmethods.com or www.salcentral.com and show me the Web services that will supposedly take over the world. Then lie back, breathe a sigh of release, and put in some contribution to your favorite open-source project in warm gratitude.
Not just a ramble, but an illiterate ramble.
on
Hacker Crackdown?
·
· Score: 1
"corporatism... not unlike that..." -- poorly defined antecedent. Read "use" as antecedent, not "corporatism".
"professionals"
"asylum"
"civilly-disobedient"
"enables copyright infringement"
I need to get some sleep.
And I should have noted, for those not familiar with the Ezra Pound case that his complaint was against the influence of corporate profit ("usura" as he termed it) in the world of liberal arts. Interestingly enough, Ezra Pound would have given Courtney Love a righteous smackdown for her silly claims that "artists" are intrinsically (or even properly distinct from) superior to craftsment. Pound felt that the greatest art came about from craft whose value was determined by the patronage of individual tastes.
I wonder whether there is a good discussion of how, if one throws art into the mix, this entire issue (of creator responsibility) has played throughout the history of the U.S.
Upon my reading of the article, the first thing that came to my mind was how Ezra Pound found himself in very big trouble for his muddled radio broadcasts in support of Benitto Mussolini during WWII.
Does it seem irrelevant? Well, let me note that Ezra Pound's actions were the use of creative expression to combat corporatism, not unlike that of the hackers who protested the RIAA and MPAA using code. In the end, it was the campaigning of other poets, including several respected laureates, who finally got the US Government to let Pound out of the insane assylum (where he was sent in place of jail). Similarly, it will probably be the efforts of respected academics and profesisonals such as David Touretsky whose efforts would be most effective in bolstering the cause of protecting creativity, even civilly disobedient creativity.
So if I can connect a few related (if quite broadly) events that come to mind, we have the Declaration of Independence, the Los Alamos scientists, the inventors of radar detectors, and now code from college kids that enables copyright protection. It would be interesting to read from someone who has a coherent history/explorations of such matters of creative freedom and responsibility.
What in the bloody blue buggering blazes does CmdrTaco mean by this comment? Did I miss something that relegates to pariah status one of the strongest singers the 20th century has produced, and one who has overcome so many obvious travails?
Now normally I wouldn't expect any story about musicians to be regular fare for/., but every now and then we get some silly story about some yahoo DJ Shadow or some moonie from the Who or some other band, and there is no such inane put-down.
De gustibus non est disputandem and all that, but remember that it's hard to narrow down any aspect of the/. crowd, least of all musical tastes.
I stopped my rather voluminous commerce with Amazon.com back when Slashdot first posted the ludicrous patent claim, but I did not fly into the arms of B&N as a result. B&N are no better, and the only small comfort I draw from this silliness is that B&N are getting a taste of their own goods.
Remember when B&N first got into the.com market? They immediately tried to overcome the tremendous lead Amazon had built, not through better prices or service, but through a silly lawsuit enjoining Amazon.com from calling themselves "The World's Largest Bookstore". This in spite of the fact that Amazon.com stocked more titles than B&N (mortar or on-line). They claimed that since Amazon's "store" was virtual and the stock was all in a cheap wharehouse somewhere, that it didn't count.
So "no thanks" to both of them. I tried out Fatbrain for the first time a fortnight ago, and I'm not sure I'd go back to Amazon if they repented and donated millions to the High-School Geek Defense Fund. Fatbrain is consistently as cheap as or cheaper than Amazon. I've heard similarly good things about Bookpool, but they didn't have several titles I wanted, so I went back to Fatbrain.
But I don't doubt that Fatbrain will do something as fat-headed as B&N and Amazon at some point and I'll have to look elsewhere as well. Oh well. Negotiis non capitem habet nisi pecuniam.
Many failed CEOs use "common business sense" as excuse for failing to adapt at a crucial time, but I wonder where they'd say GE fits into the picture.
GE has managed to grow and survive more nimble competitors despite its being the archetypical large, slow-moving ship. True, it was in _serious_ trouble before Jack Welch came on board, but by most analyses, Welch is only part of their magic, although the Temple of Superstar CEOs has raised him to demi-god status.
I only know what's been written about GE in general business journals, so I'm sure someone more knowledgeable can come up with a better example (or counter-example) of GE's survival instincts, but remember when EDI first came about, and it was shaking the established manufacturing practices to the core? Newcomers such as Sterling and Harbinger were the nimble new entrants, and yet GE managed to largely beat them off, turning GEIS into one of its most profitable divisions and charging straight into EDI. Now that Internet EDI is knocking at the doow of the traditional, _very_ profitable EDI Value Added network business (a sort of EDI ISP), it is actually Sterling and Harbinger that have been slow to embrace the future. All VANs are slowly acceptiing the reality, but GEIS has adapted with more alacrity.
Now I'm not playing praise-singer for GE: I still think they are terribly over-extended, and it's amazing that they haven't gone the way of so many other mega-conglomerates in the new economy. Nevertheless, if anyone is teaching that it's such good business sense to avoid embracing the future rather than cannibalize your current business, they are certainly using the wrong companies as example.
But I found almost nothing with which I could agree in either the "Suits" or the "Labor Shortage" article.
First of all, there is nothing any less "precise" in the term "suits" than in the word "tawdry". Not too many people buy their baubles at fetes of St. Audrey any more, bu the word remains, partly because it is aberrations like this that give human language its vibrancy. In several contexts "suits" has ceased to have any relevance to the dress of the referent. This is a good thing, even if you're not an etymologist. The phenomonon goes by several names, but in honor of the educational board of Kansas, let's call it "evolved terminology". When we try to stop the natural flow of language, we come up with abominations such as Roblimo's "its". I wonder whether Roblimo would junk the term "its" if the referents stopped wearing T-shirts.
On to more serious matters: it is pretty odd to paint engineers as a bunch of whimpering, over-privileged prima donnas (look another evolved term!), especially when you're putting MBAs on the other side of the fence. The immense bonuses and stock-options that are thrust at even mediocre businessmen in this economy is far more of a distortion than the perks of engineers. But, at least if you take the viewpoint of that august journal _The Economist_, both trends will continue as long as America continues along its asset-price inflation. When this bubble bursts, it will affect everyone: some over-privileged engineers and managers alike will find themselves pumping gas, and many unfortunale members of society will find themselves yanked under the poverty line.
This is pretty basic stuff, and it has nothing to do with the real or supposed shortage of engineers as much as it does with the distortions of the present economy: a lens that affects workers at all levels.
Of course, The Economist might be wrong and there might be a true miracle in productivity afoot. But in this case, Roblimo would _still_ be wrong (and more so because of his comparison to the mid-century recessions).
And as for the very idea of genetic algorithms replacing programmers. Please park this futuristic nonsense. GAs are a very deterministic way of harnessing implicit paralellism inheret in certain problem-spaces. They are not some form of dark voodoo. There is nothing in them that will make them sudden arbitrary problem-solvers.
I really don't like being so harsh, but it's the same issue that came up when Jon Katz started writing features. On a forum such as/., with so many picky specialists, it's probably better to be encouraging features from specialists rather than journalists. I don't consider/. to be a main-stream medium. Yes, I know it might be a bit hypocritical of me to say so when I haven't submitted a feature myself. I might just find the time to correct this.
...I want know where I can learn Python so, I can get started on development on it as soon as possible. I am a broke first year college student without any money so a free guide or tutorial on the internet would be best for me....
The official Python tutorial is on-line, and there are some other intros here.
I know you said you're a broke student, but if you can save up enough Ramen noodle wrappers, consider David Ascher's excellent "Learning Python", which O'Reilly recently put out.
For Python/XML, I'd of course advocate my company's open-source 4Suite, but the XML-SIG also has an excellent package.
If you have any questions, try the XML-SIG's mailing list, where many python/XML gurus hang out.
I must add that it was with somewhat of a cringe that I read H.P.'s comparison of Python to VB. I understand that the point of the comparison was to highlight Python's strength for rapid prototyping, but I wonder whether readers may get the impression that there is more similarity there. Python combines elegance and versatility in a way that VB cannot approach. The evolution of both languages from different teaching languages (the unfortunately successful BASIC and the not-so successful ABC) is an interesting aside in Computer Science.
I do get quite weary of explaining that Python is _much_ more than a prototyping or scripting language. I have used it in place of C++ (my favorite before ANSI got their hooks in it) and Java many times over and I see it fully as an application programming language.
Let me first of all comment that Slashdot's plenary interviews, if I may coin a phrase, are very-well conceived and produce excellent results.
This, however, I think may have been the best of them. The moderation system forwarded a very even-handed and broad set of questions, and H.P.'s answers were clearly well though-out.
I'd also like to note that H.P. helps give the lie to attempts by some to paint the entire GNOME movement with a broad brush of script-kiddie dilletantism. Miguel has made some unfortunate comments about KDE in the past, and there are several trolls in various GNOME lists, but in my general ovservation, the GNOME developers are smart, focused on GNOME, cognizant of its shortcomings and willing to go to extraordinary lengths to eliminate them, including cooperation with KDE where appropriate.
I've had a chance to look at KDE 1.1.2, and it is an excellent desktop. GNOME is my desktop of choice, but I can see how the competition has improved both. There is no doubt that GNOME has more rough edges than KDE, but as a developer, I find GNOME more interesting and faster-moving than KDE. I am very excited about libglade, Bonobo and libxml. The embryonic Orbit bindings for Python open up endless possibilities in my favorite language. Openparts is the KDE phenomenon that most piques my interest. All I know is that the Linux desktops are implementing what IBM, Motorola, Taligent, Apple, Microsoft, etc. only talked about, fought over and roundly politicized, and I'm very excited to be a part of real progress.
So thanks to Slashdot, H.P., The KDE and GNOME developers. Thanks to the eternally vilified Red Hat and Troll Tech. And let's get on with the work.
I graduated in Computer Engineering at an American college in 1994. I was actually an illegal at the time: out of status because my lawyer screwed up my papers.
In my senior year, I got a job at Zenith Electronics as long as I could get myself an H-1B Visa (they'd "sponsor" me, but I'd have to do all the leg-work). The salary they were offering was around the median the CE class of '94: $34,500 p.a.
So I went to Mexico, confessed to the INS that I'd been out of status (a gamble, but the right thing to do), but that I had sponsorship for an H-1B VISA. They gave me the Visa with no qualms and I worked for Zenith for 6 months.
It was stultifying work, so I got itchy soon and looked for a company that would hire me and help me switch my H-1B Visa. I didn't have much problem finding such a company and joined DCI as a consultant earning $42,000 p.a.
I got excellent reviews and excellent raises throughout my time at DCI (3 years), and in the meanwhile I married an American and got a green card through marriage (DCI was also sponsoring me for a green card through work and it was just a matter of which one came up for interview first).
So I'm an (African) immigrant, former H-1B holder who has always been well-paid and treated, and I didn't have a problem switching jobs when I wanted to. I credit all this to being a very good computer engineer, no more, no less. America is still largely a meritocracy regardless of whether you're a native or an immigrant, and I don't have much sympathy for people whining about "imported H-1B slave labor".
GNOME will be next out the door, unless they get the stability issues resolved fast. COL 2.2, SuSE 6.1, Slack 4.0, and Mandrake 6.0 are all using KDE 1.1.1; don't expect to see Red Hat piss away their competitive advantage waiting for GNOME to mature.
This is arrant flame-bait and not at all necessary. For a long time I used Gnome on one machine and KDE on another. After RH 6.0 came out, I chose Gnome everywhere and erased KDE. Is it so hard for KDE folks to believe that some of us prefer Gnome, and have not experienced any sort of stability problems with it? To be sure, I didn't have any stability problems with KDE either. They both crash much less than Win98, which I am forced to use for some purposes.
I went from Gnome 0.3 to 0.9, where I stayed for a long time. When Gnome 1.0 was released, I heard a lot of well-considered criticism of its stability and avoided it. I heard that it was fixed by about 1.03 and that's when I first upgraded to 1.x. I simply do _not_ have problems with crashes on my machine: Celeron 400 with 128MB RAM running RH 6.0 + Gnome (RH 5.2 + Gnome + Kernel 2.2. was just as rock stable). Netscape is the only occasional offender, and nothing that kill can't fix. BTW, I do everything from burning CDs to GIMP art to programming (Python, Java, C), etc on my main machine.
Gnome has as much a place as KDE. The competition between them has made both _much_ better in spite of the childish jabs from either side. Miguel can sometimes overdo the advocacy, but I have also heard (at second hand, admittedly) hair-raising flame-bait from core KDE developers as well.
And the key point is that Red Hat is not "pissing away" anything by supporting Gnome. In UIs, as in other things, non est disputandum de gustibus. Believe it or not, the fact that RH didn't board your favorite ship does not doom it to oblivion. Nor does the fact that other distros chose another desktop. All it proves is that there is healthy competition in the Linux landscape.
Very nice post. I am biased, being from Nigeria, but just as it was _very_ sweet to read about the Anglo-Nigerian university cooperative for computer connectivity based on Linux (it was in a recent Linux Journal), I am always glad to see how open-source empowers those you might not expect it to: from intrepid third-world citizens who haven't left in the Great Brain Drain to beleaguered victims of government oppression (I'll have to find an article about the Chiapas/E-mail thing). All I can say is, why wan't such a post moderated up? Viva la revolucion --Uche
Another Anonymous Coward Embarrases his Family
on
Review:Wing Commander
·
· Score: 1
Now we all know who really needs to go back to school: to re-take reading comprehension 101.
Good review, Rob: saves me the jing. Then again, seeing Prequel Trailer B on the big screen is tempting, not to mention the memories: I beat WC I and II without cheats, which took a while, and I too remember being annoyed by most wingmen, except the brilliant Hobbes. I never bothered with the latter 2 WCs. I heard about all the cinematic tripe they were concocting, and begged off.
At least that's my unlicensed opinion of why you're so bloody angry.
While I also share basic libertarian philosophy, I can never understand those who seethe and foam at the mouth because not everyone in the world kneels down at the ikon of liberty.
I've usually noticed among Ayn Randroids that they like to make comment about non-libertatians such that they should not be allowed to vote, or should be struck down by the forces of Darwin.
I guess their brand of liberty doesn't brook diversity, which makes me wonder how they deign to call it liberty.
Slashdot Mirror
ERH is the best XML teacher in books. I did, however, have a few notes on Effective XML:
"Thinking XML: Harold's Effective XML" [IBM developerWorks]
I pretty much live and breathe the technologies that make up the so-called Web services movement. I even co-author a column on WS on IBM developerWorks. Yet, I don't mind saying that in all likelihood, Web services will turn out to be but a round joke.
.NET (and the Web services technologies of many other vendors), it is merely than a more bloated DCOM than DCOM; a more obtuse CORBA than CORBA. The idea of implementing high-transaction RPC over HTTP, using XML in the payload and adopting a protocol without standard primitives for sequencing, transactions, security, etc., is so ridiculous that I can only attribute its current credit to the same pundits who declared that Java applets would take over the world.
To the extent that SOAP is a rich messaging protocol, and operates where EDI, MQ, JMS and the like used to, it will probably do very well because of the flexibility and interop XML gives it.
But to the extent that it turns into the sort of rot that makes up
Web services based on RPC primitives have no techical fundamentals despite the media furore, and it will soon be proved that even within the sphere of Microsoft technologies, WS implementations will not be able to achieve the interoperability and scalability required to become a serious presence on the Internet. The funny thing is that one of the artefacts of the slightly more open Microsoft these days is that you can go to any XML/Web services conference and hear Microsoft reps openly admit these difficulties.
There must be much chuckling in Redmond. They say "boo: Web services" and all their arch-nemesis open-source weenies come down with acute anxiety disorder.
Do relax. XML is the future of the Internet, and open-source rules XML. Web services haven't even *begun* to prove themselves. Go to www.xmethods.com or www.salcentral.com and show me the Web services that will supposedly take over the world. Then lie back, breathe a sigh of release, and put in some contribution to your favorite open-source project in warm gratitude.
"corporatism... not unlike that..." -- poorly defined antecedent. Read "use" as antecedent, not "corporatism".
"professionals"
"asylum"
"civilly-disobedient"
"enables copyright infringement"
I need to get some sleep.
And I should have noted, for those not familiar with the Ezra Pound case that his complaint was against the influence of corporate profit ("usura" as he termed it) in the world of liberal arts. Interestingly enough, Ezra Pound would have given Courtney Love a righteous smackdown for her silly claims that "artists" are intrinsically (or even properly distinct from) superior to craftsment. Pound felt that the greatest art came about from craft whose value was determined by the patronage of individual tastes.
--Uche
Upon my reading of the article, the first thing that came to my mind was how Ezra Pound found himself in very big trouble for his muddled radio broadcasts in support of Benitto Mussolini during WWII.
Does it seem irrelevant? Well, let me note that Ezra Pound's actions were the use of creative expression to combat corporatism, not unlike that of the hackers who protested the RIAA and MPAA using code. In the end, it was the campaigning of other poets, including several respected laureates, who finally got the US Government to let Pound out of the insane assylum (where he was sent in place of jail). Similarly, it will probably be the efforts of respected academics and profesisonals such as David Touretsky whose efforts would be most effective in bolstering the cause of protecting creativity, even civilly disobedient creativity.
So if I can connect a few related (if quite broadly) events that come to mind, we have the Declaration of Independence, the Los Alamos scientists, the inventors of radar detectors, and now code from college kids that enables copyright protection. It would be interesting to read from someone who has a coherent history/explorations of such matters of creative freedom and responsibility.
End of ramble.
Now normally I wouldn't expect any story about musicians to be regular fare for /., but every now and then we get some silly story about some yahoo DJ Shadow or some moonie from the Who or some other band, and there is no such inane put-down.
De gustibus non est disputandem and all that, but remember that it's hard to narrow down any aspect of the /. crowd, least of all musical tastes.
Sheesh!
--Uche
I stopped my rather voluminous commerce with Amazon.com back when Slashdot first posted the ludicrous patent claim, but I did not fly into the arms of B&N as a result. B&N are no better, and the only small comfort I draw from this silliness is that B&N are getting a taste of their own goods.
Remember when B&N first got into the .com market? They immediately tried to overcome the tremendous lead Amazon had built, not through better prices or service, but through a silly lawsuit enjoining Amazon.com from calling themselves "The World's Largest Bookstore". This in spite of the fact that Amazon.com stocked more titles than B&N (mortar or on-line). They claimed that since Amazon's "store" was virtual and the stock was all in a cheap wharehouse somewhere, that it didn't count.
So "no thanks" to both of them. I tried out Fatbrain for the first time a fortnight ago, and I'm not sure I'd go back to Amazon if they repented and donated millions to the High-School Geek Defense Fund. Fatbrain is consistently as cheap as or cheaper than Amazon. I've heard similarly good things about Bookpool, but they didn't have several titles I wanted, so I went back to Fatbrain.
But I don't doubt that Fatbrain will do something as fat-headed as B&N and Amazon at some point and I'll have to look elsewhere as well. Oh well. Negotiis non capitem habet nisi pecuniam.
--UcheGE has managed to grow and survive more nimble competitors despite its being the archetypical large, slow-moving ship. True, it was in _serious_ trouble before Jack Welch came on board, but by most analyses, Welch is only part of their magic, although the Temple of Superstar CEOs has raised him to demi-god status.
I only know what's been written about GE in general business journals, so I'm sure someone more knowledgeable can come up with a better example (or counter-example) of GE's survival instincts, but remember when EDI first came about, and it was shaking the established manufacturing practices to the core? Newcomers such as Sterling and Harbinger were the nimble new entrants, and yet GE managed to largely beat them off, turning GEIS into one of its most profitable divisions and charging straight into EDI. Now that Internet EDI is knocking at the doow of the traditional, _very_ profitable EDI Value Added network business (a sort of EDI ISP), it is actually Sterling and Harbinger that have been slow to embrace the future. All VANs are slowly acceptiing the reality, but GEIS has adapted with more alacrity.
Now I'm not playing praise-singer for GE: I still think they are terribly over-extended, and it's amazing that they haven't gone the way of so many other mega-conglomerates in the new economy. Nevertheless, if anyone is teaching that it's such good business sense to avoid embracing the future rather than cannibalize your current business, they are certainly using the wrong companies as example.
--Uche
First of all, there is nothing any less "precise" in the term "suits" than in the word "tawdry". Not too many people buy their baubles at fetes of St. Audrey any more, bu the word remains, partly because it is aberrations like this that give human language its vibrancy. In several contexts "suits" has ceased to have any relevance to the dress of the referent. This is a good thing, even if you're not an etymologist. The phenomonon goes by several names, but in honor of the educational board of Kansas, let's call it "evolved terminology". When we try to stop the natural flow of language, we come up with abominations such as Roblimo's "its". I wonder whether Roblimo would junk the term "its" if the referents stopped wearing T-shirts.
On to more serious matters: it is pretty odd to paint engineers as a bunch of whimpering, over-privileged prima donnas (look another evolved term!), especially when you're putting MBAs on the other side of the fence. The immense bonuses and stock-options that are thrust at even mediocre businessmen in this economy is far more of a distortion than the perks of engineers. But, at least if you take the viewpoint of that august journal _The Economist_, both trends will continue as long as America continues along its asset-price inflation. When this bubble bursts, it will affect everyone: some over-privileged engineers and managers alike will find themselves pumping gas, and many unfortunale members of society will find themselves yanked under the poverty line.
This is pretty basic stuff, and it has nothing to do with the real or supposed shortage of engineers as much as it does with the distortions of the present economy: a lens that affects workers at all levels.
Of course, The Economist might be wrong and there might be a true miracle in productivity afoot. But in this case, Roblimo would _still_ be wrong (and more so because of his comparison to the mid-century recessions).
And as for the very idea of genetic algorithms replacing programmers. Please park this futuristic nonsense. GAs are a very deterministic way of harnessing implicit paralellism inheret in certain problem-spaces. They are not some form of dark voodoo. There is nothing in them that will make them sudden arbitrary problem-solvers.
I really don't like being so harsh, but it's the same issue that came up when Jon Katz started writing features. On a forum such as /., with so many picky specialists, it's probably better to be encouraging features from specialists rather than journalists. I don't consider /. to be a main-stream medium. Yes, I know it might be a bit hypocritical of me to say so when I haven't submitted a feature myself. I might just find the time to correct this.
--
Uche
The official Python tutorial is on-line, and there are some other intros here.
I know you said you're a broke student, but if you can save up enough Ramen noodle wrappers, consider David Ascher's excellent "Learning Python", which O'Reilly recently put out.
For Python/XML, I'd of course advocate my company's open-source 4Suite, but the XML-SIG also has an excellent package.
If you have any questions, try the XML-SIG's mailing list, where many python/XML gurus hang out.
Good luck.
--Uche
I must add that it was with somewhat of a cringe that I read H.P.'s comparison of Python to VB. I understand that the point of the comparison was to highlight Python's strength for rapid prototyping, but I wonder whether readers may get the impression that there is more similarity there. Python combines elegance and versatility in a way that VB cannot approach. The evolution of both languages from different teaching languages (the unfortunately successful BASIC and the not-so successful ABC) is an interesting aside in Computer Science.
I do get quite weary of explaining that Python is _much_ more than a prototyping or scripting language. I have used it in place of C++ (my favorite before ANSI got their hooks in it) and Java many times over and I see it fully as an application programming language.
--Uche
Let me first of all comment that Slashdot's plenary interviews, if I may coin a phrase, are very-well conceived and produce excellent results.
This, however, I think may have been the best of them. The moderation system forwarded a very even-handed and broad set of questions, and H.P.'s answers were clearly well though-out.
I'd also like to note that H.P. helps give the lie to attempts by some to paint the entire GNOME movement with a broad brush of script-kiddie dilletantism. Miguel has made some unfortunate comments about KDE in the past, and there are several trolls in various GNOME lists, but in my general ovservation, the GNOME developers are smart, focused on GNOME, cognizant of its shortcomings and willing to go to extraordinary lengths to eliminate them, including cooperation with KDE where appropriate.
I've had a chance to look at KDE 1.1.2, and it is an excellent desktop. GNOME is my desktop of choice, but I can see how the competition has improved both. There is no doubt that GNOME has more rough edges than KDE, but as a developer, I find GNOME more interesting and faster-moving than KDE. I am very excited about libglade, Bonobo and libxml. The embryonic Orbit bindings for Python open up endless possibilities in my favorite language. Openparts is the KDE phenomenon that most piques my interest. All I know is that the Linux desktops are implementing what IBM, Motorola, Taligent, Apple, Microsoft, etc. only talked about, fought over and roundly politicized, and I'm very excited to be a part of real progress.
So thanks to Slashdot, H.P., The KDE and GNOME developers. Thanks to the eternally vilified Red Hat and Troll Tech. And let's get on with the work.
--Uche
Or at least, I used to be.
I graduated in Computer Engineering at an American college in 1994. I was actually an illegal at the time: out of status because my lawyer screwed up my papers.
In my senior year, I got a job at Zenith Electronics as long as I could get myself an H-1B Visa (they'd "sponsor" me, but I'd have to do all the leg-work). The salary they were offering was around the median the CE class of '94: $34,500 p.a.
So I went to Mexico, confessed to the INS that I'd been out of status (a gamble, but the right thing to do), but that I had sponsorship for an H-1B VISA. They gave me the Visa with no qualms and I worked for Zenith for 6 months.
It was stultifying work, so I got itchy soon and looked for a company that would hire me and help me switch my H-1B Visa. I didn't have much problem finding such a company and joined DCI as a consultant earning $42,000 p.a.
I got excellent reviews and excellent raises throughout my time at DCI (3 years), and in the meanwhile I married an American and got a green card through marriage (DCI was also sponsoring me for a green card through work and it was just a matter of which one came up for interview first).
So I'm an (African) immigrant, former H-1B holder who has always been well-paid and treated, and I didn't have a problem switching jobs when I wanted to. I credit all this to being a very good computer engineer, no more, no less. America is still largely a meritocracy regardless of whether you're a native or an immigrant, and I don't have much sympathy for people whining about "imported H-1B slave labor".
--Uche
This is arrant flame-bait and not at all necessary. For a long time I used Gnome on one machine and KDE on another. After RH 6.0 came out, I chose Gnome everywhere and erased KDE. Is it so hard for KDE folks to believe that some of us prefer Gnome, and have not experienced any sort of stability problems with it? To be sure, I didn't have any stability problems with KDE either. They both crash much less than Win98, which I am forced to use for some purposes.
I went from Gnome 0.3 to 0.9, where I stayed for a long time. When Gnome 1.0 was released, I heard a lot of well-considered criticism of its stability and avoided it. I heard that it was fixed by about 1.03 and that's when I first upgraded to 1.x. I simply do _not_ have problems with crashes on my machine: Celeron 400 with 128MB RAM running RH 6.0 + Gnome (RH 5.2 + Gnome + Kernel 2.2. was just as rock stable). Netscape is the only occasional offender, and nothing that kill can't fix. BTW, I do everything from burning CDs to GIMP art to programming (Python, Java, C), etc on my main machine.
Gnome has as much a place as KDE. The competition between them has made both _much_ better in spite of the childish jabs from either side. Miguel can sometimes overdo the advocacy, but I have also heard (at second hand, admittedly) hair-raising flame-bait from core KDE developers as well.
And the key point is that Red Hat is not "pissing away" anything by supporting Gnome. In UIs, as in other things, non est disputandum de gustibus. Believe it or not, the fact that RH didn't board your favorite ship does not doom it to oblivion. Nor does the fact that other distros chose another desktop. All it proves is that there is healthy competition in the Linux landscape.
--Uche
Very nice post. I am biased, being from Nigeria, but just as it was _very_ sweet to read about the Anglo-Nigerian university cooperative for computer connectivity based on Linux (it was in a recent Linux Journal), I am always glad to see how open-source empowers those you might not expect it to: from intrepid third-world citizens who haven't left in the Great Brain Drain to beleaguered victims of government oppression (I'll have to find an article about the Chiapas/E-mail thing). All I can say is, why wan't such a post moderated up? Viva la revolucion --Uche
Now we all know who really needs to go back to school: to re-take reading comprehension 101.
Good review, Rob: saves me the jing. Then again, seeing Prequel Trailer B on the big screen is tempting, not to mention the memories: I beat WC I and II without cheats, which took a while, and I too remember being annoyed by most wingmen, except the brilliant Hobbes. I never bothered with the latter 2 WCs. I heard about all the cinematic tripe they were concocting, and begged off.
--Uche
While I also share basic libertarian philosophy, I can never understand those who seethe and foam at the mouth because not everyone in the world kneels down at the ikon of liberty.
I've usually noticed among Ayn Randroids that they like to make comment about non-libertatians such that they should not be allowed to vote, or should be struck down by the forces of Darwin.
I guess their brand of liberty doesn't brook diversity, which makes me wonder how they deign to call it liberty.
--Uche