Consider the clues: Novell buys Ximian; Nat and Miguel are huge C#/.NET fans. Qt just got C# bindings.. Novell wants to differentiate itself from Sun, which is making a Java desktop. Oh No! It's going to be a frigging Mono desktop!
I'm taking a university extension course in Linux device drivers. I brought my laptop and was running KDE. The guy behind me kept looking over, and finally asked, "it isn't Windows, what is it?" This was in a *Linux* class. I didn't have the heart to tell him it was FreeBSD:-)
I can't explain why except that the feel of each is right for those purposes, to me.
If I may expand on this without offending people...
KDE has done a better job than Gnome of integrating its applications into the desktop, while Gnome has done a better job of creating a minimal out-of-your-way interface. Thus KDE is better suitable to a user's desktop when multiple applications are interacting with each other, and Gnome is better for root's desktop which typically does just one thing at a time sequentially and can't be bothered with distractions.
Combining the two into a single desktop is the wrong approach. Their internals are just too different. For instance, how do you use combine KWin with Metacity when their written in different languages and paradigms. Or do you hack KWin to use Metacity themes, or vice versa? Ditto for Kicker verus Panel.
A much better approach is to help in the interoperability effort. Make the two desktops work better together. Create some unified themes. Work on QtGTK+ or GTKQt. Then pick ONE desktop to be the default, while still providing the other as an alternative.
Unfortunately, I see this as an uninformed pronouncement by Novell management. Consider the two following incompatible quotes from the article:
"Technically, you can't combine them, but we are working toward having the best features of both in a single interface. We'll implement all the best features in one technology."
and
"...you'll see the first major results of this effort in the next versions of SUSE Linux, which will be released toward the end of the year."
I wonder what this major result is going to be? KPanel? Metaciwin? Konqilus?
Is he overworked / very busy - does he have time to learn this things in order to support your project?
Yes, he is overworked and very busy. But so am I. When someone slaps a new project on my desk to do, I grumble and bitch and then do it. What else can I do? The days of the dot.com are over. We have lost our perks. We do not have the luxury of saying "I don't have the bandwidth to do it." If all the other departments can cope with overwork, why can't IT?
I fully empathize with the guy. He probably knows more about SAP than I will ever know about sh or C. But it's his attitude that irks me. Completing it should take a halfway competent scripter about three hours to do. He already knows csh, so he should be able to pick up sh in about another three hours. Heck, he could use Perl instead! Or ignore my advice and stick with csh and make it work.
In short, this guy is a professional, and he needs to act like it. Especially when our company outsources to India everytime the stock price drops a millicent. Speaking of which, I need to get off of Slashdot because the boss is roaming the halls...
IT guys may be unhappy, but the people who have to work with them are even unhappier. Their attitudes are utterly alien to anything else in business. Even marketing drones have firmer grasps on reality.
I am a software developer, but I am not in "IT". My company has a firm division between the people who write the software that goes into the products we sell, and the people who manage the network, databases, and computer infrastructure. When I refer to "IT", I am referring to the latter division, though I realize that there is considerable overlap between the two in most other companies.
Case in point. The IT guy in charge of maintaining the SAP database on Solaris sent me an email saying that he knows nothing about Unix, is unwilling to learn shell scripting, and requesting that I change one of our product's requirements so that he doesn't have to do any extra work.
This staggers my mind. We must seemingly be inhabiting two different realities. He's running a major piece of software on Solaris but doesn't know Unix. He's maintaining a database but can't write a shell script. And in the midst of a major hemorrage to Bangalore from both of our departments, is unwilling to improve his technical skills. He wants me to do his job for him!
This is only one example. I surely hope other companies aren't as screwed up in the IT department as we are. But talking with friends at other companies, some of whom are in IT, I fear that my company is not all that unusual.
1) A decent 3D input mechanism. One dimension: keyboard. Two dimensions: mouse. Three dimensions: ???
2) A UI that isn't just eye-candy. Imagine your current 2D desktop. You click on an icon and a browser instantly appears. You minimize it and it instantly disappears. You click a window at the bottom of the z-order stack and it instanly comes to the top. Now look at all the prototype 3D desktops out there. Just the opposite. You click on an icon and you get a five second animation. You minimize it and you get another five second animation. You click a window way down in the depth field and you get a five second animation of it floating to the top. And it it's not perfectly aligned with the XY axis, whatever's in that window is going to very hard to read.
3) A sensible 3D paradigm. The 2D paradigm for every usable desktop is the "pane". A text editor window acts like a 2D sheet of paper, for example. But just like in the real world, you still need panes in a 3D desktop. A "box" won't work for editing documents. These panes need to fit into the paradigm correctly, or the desktop is unusable. Look at the real world desktop. If you read a piece of paper, it's much easier if it's flat on the 2D surface of your desk, than if someone is holding it up in front of your face. We use 2D all the time in real life, and the 3D desktop needs to account for that.
No, I don't know what the sensible 3D paradigm should be. If I knew that I would be writing a 3D desktop now. But I do know that the 3D desktop prototypes I've used and seen are simply unusable for general purpose work. Some work for specialty uses (CAD, games, etc), but none are suitable for general use. Looking Glass is no exception.
Ah yes, the good old days. People recycled, turned off unused lights, and kept their land free of litter, not out of any religious duty to the Earth goddess, but simply because it was the pragmatic thing to do.
Of course it's not so simple. But when the primary factor influencing environmental policy is public perception, then clearcutting is bad. Warm fuzzies trump scientific ecological studies every time.
Gee, iFolder sounded interesting until you mentioned that. I'm not sure what will be slower, molasses running downhill in winter or Miguel's and Bill's vision for the future desktop.
And the only thing missing was a Linux client, so this is good news.
And it will be Open Source, to expect BSD ports to follow within minutes of its release. That's the great thing about Open Source, it's platform neutral.
I can't stand vi, and there really isn't a simple console (text-mode) editor geared for DOS/Windows users available on Linux.
Frankly, if I have to use their stupid DOS edit when I'm in their country, then they can use stupid vi when they're in mine! I'm sick and tired of people dumbing stuff down so ex-DOS/Win people don't have to learn anything about their new environment. vi isn't friendly by a long shot, but it's ubiquitous. There's nothing sadder than a sysadmin who never bothered to learn vi because nano was always available on his distro.
Okay, my vi bigotry is done, now back to your regularly scheduled program...
Pine, oak, ash, beech, maple, etc., are all "farmed" woods suitable for mice that don't require any rainforests to be stripped. Even apple and cherry wood from old orchards is suitable for small items like these, and would be very cool.
If you want some exotic rainforest hardwoods instead, there's no need to "strip log" them. Selective cutting preserves the ecostructure quite nicely. Clearcutting is a sign of bad government management of resources. It's easy enough to brand "eco-friendly" lumber to make sure you aren't buying mouse made from clearcut timber.
Cut down a tree (renewable resource) versus mining bauxite (nonrenewable resource). The answer is trivial when you think about it. While it's a bad thing to cut down entire rainforests of hardwood just to make mice, it's even worse to mine entire mountains level just so you get a 1337 aluminum case.
Don't worry, it will change. The currency market always does. In a couple of years some other nation is going to get pounded in the ass over their currency.
The dollar is so cheap now that everyone is buying it up at discount rates. But you can only use the US dollar to buy US goods, (or trade to someone else who wants to buy US goods) so it will correct itself.
I won't listen to RMS tell me how to make a living with Free Software, because he doesn't know the first thing about it. He's like the quadrennial political candidate who's never had a job in his life campaigning on workers issues.
On the other hand Michael Tiemann has a lot of real world experience making a living off of Free Software and running a profitable Free Software company. Michael's views on GNU, GPL and Free Software have a lot more relevance to me than anything RMS says.
In fact, I would hazard a guess that the Free Software Movement(tm) would have crashed and burned without Michael Tiemann.
If you want to take a strict free-market, no-academia business-only approach...
Who says the free market can't have academia? While universities traditionally need wealthy patrons, those patrons don't have to be governments. Free markets would be irrelevant to academia only if academia provided goods and services that no one wanted.
Roads can't exist as a private enterprise either.
Completely false. Private roads do exist. The only reason they tend to be government institutions is because private concerns don't have the power of eminent domain to kick people out of their homesteads to make way for the new interstate. That's not to say that a network of private roads would be an easy system to set up, or that it would be problem free, but it is doable.
Regardless of whether most of the world is anti-Bush or anti-American, it's still a weird ass thing to put in a list of open source benefits!
I understand where Andreeson is coming from, but he could have worded it differently. Perhaps "Open source benefits from globalisation" would have been better.
I used Solaris as one of my examples. Solaris is a closed source proprietary operating system. As a point of reference, Sun also offers professional support. As a matter of fact, Sun is notable for having one of the best customer support teams anywhere.
I don't want jobs to disappear. But neither do I subscribe to you "make work" attitude. According to this philosophy, we should all be driving smoke-spewing clunkers so that there will be more jobs for automotive smog technicians, and should never bother to cover our mouths when we cough so that there will be more jobs for physicians.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh Crap! I just realized what this means!
Consider the clues: Novell buys Ximian; Nat and Miguel are huge C#/.NET fans. Qt just got C# bindings.. Novell wants to differentiate itself from Sun, which is making a Java desktop. Oh No! It's going to be a frigging Mono desktop!
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Even the schools around here at adapting Linux...
:-)
I'm taking a university extension course in Linux device drivers. I brought my laptop and was running KDE. The guy behind me kept looking over, and finally asked, "it isn't Windows, what is it?" This was in a *Linux* class. I didn't have the heart to tell him it was FreeBSD
Easy. That's old hat. The only slightly interesting thing about it is that he's using the new week-old Plastik theme for Mozilla.
I can't explain why except that the feel of each is right for those purposes, to me.
If I may expand on this without offending people...
KDE has done a better job than Gnome of integrating its applications into the desktop, while Gnome has done a better job of creating a minimal out-of-your-way interface. Thus KDE is better suitable to a user's desktop when multiple applications are interacting with each other, and Gnome is better for root's desktop which typically does just one thing at a time sequentially and can't be bothered with distractions.
And when they settle on one sound server, make it desktop neutral! Just like libxml. Keep glib2 and Qt out of it.
Combining the two into a single desktop is the wrong approach. Their internals are just too different. For instance, how do you use combine KWin with Metacity when their written in different languages and paradigms. Or do you hack KWin to use Metacity themes, or vice versa? Ditto for Kicker verus Panel.
A much better approach is to help in the interoperability effort. Make the two desktops work better together. Create some unified themes. Work on QtGTK+ or GTKQt. Then pick ONE desktop to be the default, while still providing the other as an alternative.
Unfortunately, I see this as an uninformed pronouncement by Novell management. Consider the two following incompatible quotes from the article:
"Technically, you can't combine them, but we are working toward having the best features of both in a single interface. We'll implement all the best features in one technology."
and
"...you'll see the first major results of this effort in the next versions of SUSE Linux, which will be released toward the end of the year."
I wonder what this major result is going to be? KPanel? Metaciwin? Konqilus?
Is he overworked / very busy - does he have time to learn this things in order to support your project?
Yes, he is overworked and very busy. But so am I. When someone slaps a new project on my desk to do, I grumble and bitch and then do it. What else can I do? The days of the dot.com are over. We have lost our perks. We do not have the luxury of saying "I don't have the bandwidth to do it." If all the other departments can cope with overwork, why can't IT?
I fully empathize with the guy. He probably knows more about SAP than I will ever know about sh or C. But it's his attitude that irks me. Completing it should take a halfway competent scripter about three hours to do. He already knows csh, so he should be able to pick up sh in about another three hours. Heck, he could use Perl instead! Or ignore my advice and stick with csh and make it work.
In short, this guy is a professional, and he needs to act like it. Especially when our company outsources to India everytime the stock price drops a millicent. Speaking of which, I need to get off of Slashdot because the boss is roaming the halls...
a) find a company to make a powerpoint alternative which saves to html files
Options include:
a) Save PowerPoint presentation to HTML using PowerPoint itself.
b) Save PowerPoint presentation to HTML using OpenOffice
Of course, you're going to lose all your fancy wipes and fades, but to those I say "good riddance!"
IT guys may be unhappy, but the people who have to work with them are even unhappier. Their attitudes are utterly alien to anything else in business. Even marketing drones have firmer grasps on reality.
I am a software developer, but I am not in "IT". My company has a firm division between the people who write the software that goes into the products we sell, and the people who manage the network, databases, and computer infrastructure. When I refer to "IT", I am referring to the latter division, though I realize that there is considerable overlap between the two in most other companies.
Case in point. The IT guy in charge of maintaining the SAP database on Solaris sent me an email saying that he knows nothing about Unix, is unwilling to learn shell scripting, and requesting that I change one of our product's requirements so that he doesn't have to do any extra work.
This staggers my mind. We must seemingly be inhabiting two different realities. He's running a major piece of software on Solaris but doesn't know Unix. He's maintaining a database but can't write a shell script. And in the midst of a major hemorrage to Bangalore from both of our departments, is unwilling to improve his technical skills. He wants me to do his job for him!
This is only one example. I surely hope other companies aren't as screwed up in the IT department as we are. But talking with friends at other companies, some of whom are in IT, I fear that my company is not all that unusual.
What a usable real-world 3D interface needs:
1) A decent 3D input mechanism. One dimension: keyboard. Two dimensions: mouse. Three dimensions: ???
2) A UI that isn't just eye-candy. Imagine your current 2D desktop. You click on an icon and a browser instantly appears. You minimize it and it instantly disappears. You click a window at the bottom of the z-order stack and it instanly comes to the top. Now look at all the prototype 3D desktops out there. Just the opposite. You click on an icon and you get a five second animation. You minimize it and you get another five second animation. You click a window way down in the depth field and you get a five second animation of it floating to the top. And it it's not perfectly aligned with the XY axis, whatever's in that window is going to very hard to read.
3) A sensible 3D paradigm. The 2D paradigm for every usable desktop is the "pane". A text editor window acts like a 2D sheet of paper, for example. But just like in the real world, you still need panes in a 3D desktop. A "box" won't work for editing documents. These panes need to fit into the paradigm correctly, or the desktop is unusable. Look at the real world desktop. If you read a piece of paper, it's much easier if it's flat on the 2D surface of your desk, than if someone is holding it up in front of your face. We use 2D all the time in real life, and the 3D desktop needs to account for that.
No, I don't know what the sensible 3D paradigm should be. If I knew that I would be writing a 3D desktop now. But I do know that the 3D desktop prototypes I've used and seen are simply unusable for general purpose work. Some work for specialty uses (CAD, games, etc), but none are suitable for general use. Looking Glass is no exception.
You misunderstand. That's per year, and he's my replacement in Bangalore...
Ah yes, the good old days. People recycled, turned off unused lights, and kept their land free of litter, not out of any religious duty to the Earth goddess, but simply because it was the pragmatic thing to do.
In many cases it's not so simple
Of course it's not so simple. But when the primary factor influencing environmental policy is public perception, then clearcutting is bad. Warm fuzzies trump scientific ecological studies every time.
Been reading too many ecofreak brochures again, have we?
Not at all. I avoid such literature like the plague.
Knowing your case can be recycled into about 294 cans of jolt cola... priceless
Knowing that 9 out of 10 cases never will be... shocking
Gee, iFolder sounded interesting until you mentioned that. I'm not sure what will be slower, molasses running downhill in winter or Miguel's and Bill's vision for the future desktop.
And the only thing missing was a Linux client, so this is good news.
And it will be Open Source, to expect BSD ports to follow within minutes of its release. That's the great thing about Open Source, it's platform neutral.
I can't stand vi, and there really isn't a simple console (text-mode) editor geared for DOS/Windows users available on Linux.
Frankly, if I have to use their stupid DOS edit when I'm in their country, then they can use stupid vi when they're in mine! I'm sick and tired of people dumbing stuff down so ex-DOS/Win people don't have to learn anything about their new environment. vi isn't friendly by a long shot, but it's ubiquitous. There's nothing sadder than a sysadmin who never bothered to learn vi because nano was always available on his distro.
Okay, my vi bigotry is done, now back to your regularly scheduled program...
Pine, oak, ash, beech, maple, etc., are all "farmed" woods suitable for mice that don't require any rainforests to be stripped. Even apple and cherry wood from old orchards is suitable for small items like these, and would be very cool.
If you want some exotic rainforest hardwoods instead, there's no need to "strip log" them. Selective cutting preserves the ecostructure quite nicely. Clearcutting is a sign of bad government management of resources. It's easy enough to brand "eco-friendly" lumber to make sure you aren't buying mouse made from clearcut timber.
So what renewable resources are your PC accessories made of? Plastic and aluminum?
Cut down a tree (renewable resource) versus mining bauxite (nonrenewable resource). The answer is trivial when you think about it. While it's a bad thing to cut down entire rainforests of hardwood just to make mice, it's even worse to mine entire mountains level just so you get a 1337 aluminum case.
Don't worry, it will change. The currency market always does. In a couple of years some other nation is going to get pounded in the ass over their currency.
The dollar is so cheap now that everyone is buying it up at discount rates. But you can only use the US dollar to buy US goods, (or trade to someone else who wants to buy US goods) so it will correct itself.
I won't listen to RMS tell me how to make a living with Free Software, because he doesn't know the first thing about it. He's like the quadrennial political candidate who's never had a job in his life campaigning on workers issues.
On the other hand Michael Tiemann has a lot of real world experience making a living off of Free Software and running a profitable Free Software company. Michael's views on GNU, GPL and Free Software have a lot more relevance to me than anything RMS says.
In fact, I would hazard a guess that the Free Software Movement(tm) would have crashed and burned without Michael Tiemann.
If you want to take a strict free-market, no-academia business-only approach...
Who says the free market can't have academia? While universities traditionally need wealthy patrons, those patrons don't have to be governments. Free markets would be irrelevant to academia only if academia provided goods and services that no one wanted.
Roads can't exist as a private enterprise either.
Completely false. Private roads do exist. The only reason they tend to be government institutions is because private concerns don't have the power of eminent domain to kick people out of their homesteads to make way for the new interstate. That's not to say that a network of private roads would be an easy system to set up, or that it would be problem free, but it is doable.
Regardless of whether most of the world is anti-Bush or anti-American, it's still a weird ass thing to put in a list of open source benefits!
I understand where Andreeson is coming from, but he could have worded it differently. Perhaps "Open source benefits from globalisation" would have been better.
I used Solaris as one of my examples. Solaris is a closed source proprietary operating system. As a point of reference, Sun also offers professional support. As a matter of fact, Sun is notable for having one of the best customer support teams anywhere.
I don't want jobs to disappear. But neither do I subscribe to you "make work" attitude. According to this philosophy, we should all be driving smoke-spewing clunkers so that there will be more jobs for automotive smog technicians, and should never bother to cover our mouths when we cough so that there will be more jobs for physicians.