Yes, Gnome (like many free software projects) have UI experts working on it too. But it's a difference if Eugenia writes some report, maybe (or maybe not) influencing the decision of the Nautilus developers on how to implement something, or if the UI design team in a company says to the coder: "you implement it like this, even if you don't like it."
I mean, as I and many friends first read about this "spatial design" (i.e. Win95A file manager behaviour), all of us were very skeptic and found that it would be a step backwards. I don't know how the exact situation is on the gnome discussion boards, but from the reaction here on slashdot it seems that they (the Nautilus devs) just ignore the thoughts and experiences of their current users, just like The Gimp team is ignoring a large base of potential users by not making the inclusion of a MDI mode a top priority.
Yeah, exactly. I use Gnome myself, but that's the thing happening when you let coders do interface decisions. You usually end up with things like this "spatial view" in Nautilus or, say, the cluttered interface of Gimp. Everyone will complain what an utter bullshit this is, yet the people actually coding it will insist that it actually improves usability, despite the fact that no one wants it like this (other than a handful people, but those are probably the some that also find editing sendmail.cf by hand more intuitive than using some configuration UI). Also, they say, it does work: just double click the middle mouse button. Middle mouse button, my ass! The end argument will always be, that it's free software, it doesn't cost something, and one could fork it if one really needed the feature so badly, besides, be nice to us, we're doing this in our spare time, case closed.
There's a reason why companies do usability studies rather than asking their coders what could be "cool" or "intuitive". Sometimes things like Clippy will result, but most of the time, it prevents stuff like "spatial views" to happen.
AFAIK Star/Open Office offers next to no support for macros
AFAIK you know nothing.
Of course there's no automatic converter for Visual Basic for Application macros (would be difficult, e.g. because VBA is built on ActiveX/COM/OLE, which is not available on Linux). But OO has its own scripting language which is actually quite similar, and similarly powerful.
Of course it depends on the specific situation, but I assume that this isn't as safe as you may think. Even if he didn't sign the agreement they may be able to prove that he read it and gave it back to them, and so he knew that these are the rules. The situation would be much different when your friend would have crossed out everything in the agreement before, _then signed it_.
eCos was once published under the eCos License, which was similar to the LGPL but not GPL-compatible. It is now published under the GPL with the exception of allowing proprietary applications / extensions (this is important in the embedded software market).
About 90% of the source code consists of generic list implementations (copy-and pasted). Yeah, right, like 20 times the same linked list implementation!
The other 10% look very incomplete. Hence this code snipet from the main pump control module:
unsigned short int hw_control(device_t slot, time_t time, const char *dev) {
printf("%s:%d\n", dev, slot);// usleep(time * 1000);
printf("%s:%d\n", dev, 0);
return 0; }
I'm not sure how this is supposed to control pumps and all that:P
Remember that (since like Win98 or something), if you insert a media which isn't yet formatted in Windows, you get a message saying "The media you inserted is not formatted -- do you want to format it now? [Yes] [No]". Most people will click "Yes", wait 10 seconds, and here we go.
Well's Fargo is using some cool 'Phone Home' software that was described on Slashdot several times that MOST everyone thought was a good idea...
Why is it a good idea when it will protect your laptop or employer's laptop, but suddenly, the FBI has some nefarious hooks into AOL when they publish that they captured a laptop thief because the thief logged into AOL?
So when I can be sure that it really is the "cool phone home" software then everything's alright.
OMG... It shows "doubleclick.net", because the ad is from this server. On/., it would show "slashdot.org" instead. This option is off by default and will stay so, and is ment to be used with interactive stuff (voice recognition, voip,...) only.
However (unless you are a Nokia 7650/6310i/6xxx user) You have nothign to worry.
Think Windows Messenger. It's a matter of like five mouse clicks to disable it, yet about every Windows user out there is constantly getting spam and virii over it and has no clue how to disable it.
Most musicians I know (including myself) don't care if they're listening to their 3 watts radio alarm clock or a thousand-something watts audiophile tube system.
In contrast, most "audiophiles" I know can't even tell a major from a minor chord, yet still pretend they can tell the difference between a 128 kHz MP3 and 192 kHz MP3.
Maybe a pro race driver doesn't care about speeding because he knows how fast he could go if he wanted to...
This guy could just bob his left and right to get the true 3d image.
Yeah, but this is a predefined distance which relies on the fact that people's eyes have a "typical" distance. The stereo 3D effect through movement in reality works even when you move your head only a very small distance (depending on the resolution of the eyes of course).
I hate to point out the obvious, and I don't mean to be insensitive, however, if you are blind on one eye, then you are not able to see third dimensionally in the first place
You are wrong. Although it is correct that the one-eyed may have difficulties to see that intense 3D effect which people with two eyes experience, a 3D "measurement" can also be made by other means, such as moving the camera / eye position, and this can replicate the 3D effect in the brain. A 3D screen which relies on the fact that the viewer actually has two eyes won't work in this case, of course.
However, one thing still bothers me. Apparently, it is O.K to spend cash like water, rip of your creditors and declare bankruptcy, and then just do a little paperwork and carry on as before?
Depends. First, this is the whole idea of having a "business", "company" or whatever: You invest in something, but have a fixed amount of money to loose, because you can go bankrupt and start all over. When you start a bussiness, you can be sure, that if the business goes down, you will typically loose money, but it will not break your neck. This is not different from an investor who will also only give the company some fixed amount, which he may loose, or get back sometime.
The problem is another one here, though. Normally, a company that goes bankrupt, leaves some value. Say, a manufacturing company leaves machines, vehicles and the likes. These are f.e. auctioned, and so the amount of money lost often is kept within a limit. Likewise, a software company normally leaves a bunch of source code (some may call it "intellectual property"), and the rights to this code can be sold to another investor.
With open source, all the source code is public, and there is no point in selling it (except you transfer the copyright, but that's difficult with something that builds upon another GPL'd product, but that's another story). Thus, at any time, the value of the "intellectual property" contained within the open-source company is effectively zero.
That doesn't mean that open source is worthless or companies building their business model on open source are deemed to fail. It just means that investors must be aware of the special "intellectual property" issues that arise in such a scenario.
why everyone these days actually gathers as much data as possible and saves it for very long periods. Is it actually useful to have this data after several years? I don't mean the statistics gathered (like how many passenger there were), but the raw, personalized, data itself. Or do they hope this will make them friends within the police/government?
The system that runs at my local Ford dealer is Windows 98 with a telnet client on top of it. I guess the migration to Linux won't be too problematic...
If all input and systems had hard wired capacities, then, there could be no denial of service attacks as program behavior would be bounded.
What a crap. Fixed-size working sets are a good idea sometimes (say, control systems), but don't solve the problem that you still have to work on the data.
Also, what's e.g. the use of a database that has a pre-allocated, fixed number of records and tables?
Knoppix already once saved my ass. At home, I use Linux, but I had to make a presentation (built with OpenOffice) the next day on my laptop, which runs Windows 2000 because I need some Windows apps there. I wanted to export the presentation as PDF, but that failed. So, just 2 hours before the presentation, I downloaded Knoppix. So I could start Linux from the CD, which includes OpenOffice and do my presentation.
Knoppix is also useful for marketing Linux. You can easily give Knoppix away and guarantee that it doesn't do any harm to the system. Most people actually are quite impressed by it.
Since Linux is all about choice, a Gnome Knoppix distribution is surely a thing that will be useful for a lot of uses.
Look, it is important that we get informed about very broad, obvious patents like this. After all we may be affected by them. They also can be used as examples. And if you don't feel like discussing this again, just skip the comments and go to the next story.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, Gnome (like many free software projects) have UI experts working on it too. But it's a difference if Eugenia writes some report, maybe (or maybe not) influencing the decision of the Nautilus developers on how to implement something, or if the UI design team in a company says to the coder: "you implement it like this, even if you don't like it."
I mean, as I and many friends first read about this "spatial design" (i.e. Win95A file manager behaviour), all of us were very skeptic and found that it would be a step backwards. I don't know how the exact situation is on the gnome discussion boards, but from the reaction here on slashdot it seems that they (the Nautilus devs) just ignore the thoughts and experiences of their current users, just like The Gimp team is ignoring a large base of potential users by not making the inclusion of a MDI mode a top priority.
Yeah, exactly. I use Gnome myself, but that's the thing happening when you let coders do interface decisions. You usually end up with things like this "spatial view" in Nautilus or, say, the cluttered interface of Gimp. Everyone will complain what an utter bullshit this is, yet the people actually coding it will insist that it actually improves usability, despite the fact that no one wants it like this (other than a handful people, but those are probably the some that also find editing sendmail.cf by hand more intuitive than using some configuration UI). Also, they say, it does work: just double click the middle mouse button. Middle mouse button, my ass! The end argument will always be, that it's free software, it doesn't cost something, and one could fork it if one really needed the feature so badly, besides, be nice to us, we're doing this in our spare time, case closed.
There's a reason why companies do usability studies rather than asking their coders what could be "cool" or "intuitive". Sometimes things like Clippy will result, but most of the time, it prevents stuff like "spatial views" to happen.
Kudos Slashdot. Hiss to CNN.
Yes, Kudos! But why don't we have a RSS feed for every section (Games, YRO and so on)...?
AFAIK Star/Open Office offers next to no support for macros
AFAIK you know nothing.
Of course there's no automatic converter for Visual Basic for Application macros (would be difficult, e.g. because VBA is built on ActiveX/COM/OLE, which is not available on Linux). But OO has its own scripting language which is actually quite similar, and similarly powerful.
Of course it depends on the specific situation, but I assume that this isn't as safe as you may think. Even if he didn't sign the agreement they may be able to prove that he read it and gave it back to them, and so he knew that these are the rules. The situation would be much different when your friend would have crossed out everything in the agreement before, _then signed it_.
eCos was once published under the eCos License, which was similar to the LGPL but not GPL-compatible. It is now published under the GPL with the exception of allowing proprietary applications / extensions (this is important in the embedded software market).
Yeah, did you have a look at the source code?
// usleep(time * 1000);
:P
About 90% of the source code consists of generic list implementations (copy-and pasted). Yeah, right, like 20 times the same linked list implementation!
The other 10% look very incomplete. Hence this code snipet from the main pump control module:
unsigned short int hw_control(device_t slot, time_t time, const char *dev) {
printf("%s:%d\n", dev, slot);
printf("%s:%d\n", dev, 0);
return 0;
}
I'm not sure how this is supposed to control pumps and all that
Remember that (since like Win98 or something), if you insert a media which isn't yet formatted in Windows, you get a message saying "The media you inserted is not formatted -- do you want to format it now? [Yes] [No]". Most people will click "Yes", wait 10 seconds, and here we go.
Not much of a problem.
Well's Fargo is using some cool 'Phone Home' software that was described on Slashdot several times that MOST everyone thought was a good idea...
Why is it a good idea when it will protect your laptop or employer's laptop, but suddenly, the FBI has some nefarious hooks into AOL when they publish that they captured a laptop thief because the thief logged into AOL?
So when I can be sure that it really is the "cool phone home" software then everything's alright.
But who really knows?
Just take out your cooking pans, pots and stuff and hit them with utensil in hope to scare the dog into spitting the moon back out.
:-)
Sorry
better yet, use bochs
OMG... It shows "doubleclick.net", because the ad is from this server. On /., it would show "slashdot.org" instead. This option is off by default and will stay so, and is ment to be used with interactive stuff (voice recognition, voip, ...) only.
With Windows every hardware manufacturer and his dog are out there to make sure that the installation will work for 95% of the windows users.
Yeah, right... so is it the fault of Linux that the hardware manufacturers simply ignore, if not sabotage it?
However (unless you are a Nokia 7650/6310i/6xxx user) You have nothign to worry.
Think Windows Messenger. It's a matter of like five mouse clicks to disable it, yet about every Windows user out there is constantly getting spam and virii over it and has no clue how to disable it.
I tell you what.
I am a musician.
Most musicians I know (including myself) don't care if they're listening to their 3 watts radio alarm clock or a thousand-something watts audiophile tube system.
In contrast, most "audiophiles" I know can't even tell a major from a minor chord, yet still pretend they can tell the difference between a 128 kHz MP3 and 192 kHz MP3.
Maybe a pro race driver doesn't care about speeding because he knows how fast he could go if he wanted to...
This guy could just bob his left and right to get the true 3d image.
Yeah, but this is a predefined distance which relies on the fact that people's eyes have a "typical" distance. The stereo 3D effect through movement in reality works even when you move your head only a very small distance (depending on the resolution of the eyes of course).
I hate to point out the obvious, and I don't mean to be insensitive, however, if you are blind on one eye, then you are not able to see third dimensionally in the first place
You are wrong. Although it is correct that the one-eyed may have difficulties to see that intense 3D effect which people with two eyes experience, a 3D "measurement" can also be made by other means, such as moving the camera / eye position, and this can replicate the 3D effect in the brain. A 3D screen which relies on the fact that the viewer actually has two eyes won't work in this case, of course.
However, one thing still bothers me. Apparently, it is O.K to spend cash like water, rip of your creditors and declare bankruptcy, and then just do a little paperwork and carry on as before?
Depends. First, this is the whole idea of having a "business", "company" or whatever: You invest in something, but have a fixed amount of money to loose, because you can go bankrupt and start all over. When you start a bussiness, you can be sure, that if the business goes down, you will typically loose money, but it will not break your neck. This is not different from an investor who will also only give the company some fixed amount, which he may loose, or get back sometime.
The problem is another one here, though. Normally, a company that goes bankrupt, leaves some value. Say, a manufacturing company leaves machines, vehicles and the likes. These are f.e. auctioned, and so the amount of money lost often is kept within a limit. Likewise, a software company normally leaves a bunch of source code (some may call it "intellectual property"), and the rights to this code can be sold to another investor.
With open source, all the source code is public, and there is no point in selling it (except you transfer the copyright, but that's difficult with something that builds upon another GPL'd product, but that's another story). Thus, at any time, the value of the "intellectual property" contained within the open-source company is effectively zero.
That doesn't mean that open source is worthless or companies building their business model on open source are deemed to fail. It just means that investors must be aware of the special "intellectual property" issues that arise in such a scenario.
10% who post "Slashdot prediction" messages....
why everyone these days actually gathers as much data as possible and saves it for very long periods. Is it actually useful to have this data after several years? I don't mean the statistics gathered (like how many passenger there were), but the raw, personalized, data itself. Or do they hope this will make them friends within the police/government?
The system that runs at my local Ford dealer is Windows 98 with a telnet client on top of it. I guess the migration to Linux won't be too problematic...
If all input and systems had hard wired capacities, then, there could be no denial of service attacks as program behavior would be bounded.
What a crap. Fixed-size working sets are a good idea sometimes (say, control systems), but don't solve the problem that you still have to work on the data.
Also, what's e.g. the use of a database that has a pre-allocated, fixed number of records and tables?
It's handy for diagnosing problems. You can see if the memory is broken, or if the OS doesn't use it because of some misconfiguration.
Knoppix already once saved my ass. At home, I use Linux, but I had to make a presentation (built with OpenOffice) the next day on my laptop, which runs Windows 2000 because I need some Windows apps there. I wanted to export the presentation as PDF, but that failed. So, just 2 hours before the presentation, I downloaded Knoppix. So I could start Linux from the CD, which includes OpenOffice and do my presentation.
Knoppix is also useful for marketing Linux. You can easily give Knoppix away and guarantee that it doesn't do any harm to the system. Most people actually are quite impressed by it.
Since Linux is all about choice, a Gnome Knoppix distribution is surely a thing that will be useful for a lot of uses.
Look, it is important that we get informed about very broad, obvious patents like this. After all we may be affected by them. They also can be used as examples. And if you don't feel like discussing this again, just skip the comments and go to the next story.