The biggest advantage is that I am immune to coworkers who insist on "personalizing" their mail with colors, fonts, graphics in their sigs, and "stationary" (shudder).
I love it when I get a one line message on the order of "Yes, I will attend", followed by twelve attachments. Hmmm, what are those, I think to myself. So I go look at them. One's a background image of flowers. Another is the silly corporate logo. A third is the gold bullet image. A fourth is a blue bar images. Etc, etc, etc.
Actually my post was in reference to companies, and not the home user. I sit at work and see a whole squadron of MCSEs busily trying to get security under control and think that the problem just might be related to Microsoft.
The costs of retraining aren't really that much, and in the long run, Unix training is going to be cheaper than Windows training. But retraining is a red herring. The real cost of Windows is its insecurity and instability. How many full time training personnel do you need for Solaris, FreeBSD, or Linux compared to the full time Windows-nursemaids you currently use? I know the answer because my company was once a Solaris shop. We got by then with one trainer and five admins for 1200 employees, while now we still have one trainer, but twenty admins for less than a thousand employees.
They just dont seem to think that not everyone is using a personal home computer.
So why are companies insisting on using operating systems designed for personal home computers?
In the case of Bell Labs, they weren't allowed to profit off of a lot of their research (like C and UNIX) because of their monopoly status. In the case of Xerox, they're notable because they're the extreme edge of the bell curve. They could have invented fire and still lost money on the research.
My former company used to spend 14% of the budget on basic research. We were the innovators in our industry. Now that we've been bought out by a huge Eurocorp, we have to beg to get even 4% for the essential product development required to keep up with our competitors.
Would that not cause binary conflicts? I switched to BSD to get away from binary conflict hell.
Read the link, Luke!
This solves the pernicious problem of applying security updates to 500 machines running source-based operating systems. For my single system here at home, it's a trivial matter to apply a patch, compile and install. But for for 500 machines this would be excruciating.
I don't think we are even a little bit closer to that dream today than we were 24 years ago.
The attitude of that professor is still with us as well. A couple of years ago I attended an overview session on Syngo (Siemen's medical software framework). According to the presenter, programmers were obsolete, because all you needed was to write a set of configuration files. Only a few weeks ago a CA Unicenter (systems management) salesman said my project didn't need any developers because all you needed to do was to write some templates.
Locks and crashes caused by apps were common because the task scheduler and memory model were created with scarcity in mind
Only to a small extent. The major reasons for the ubiquitousness of crashes in these systems was pervasive backwards compatibility, and to a lesser extend, the market pressure to release a product before it's ready.
For a tiny consumer product selling for $50, a $25 fee is ridiculous. But the embedded market is much bigger than that. Thinking that all embedded systems must be consumer shrinkwrapped items is like thinking that all operating systems should be applicable to Aunt Tillie's desktop eMachine.
And if you really need some expansion capabilities, you always have USB - You can get just about anything in a USB form these days.
Yes, and those "just about anything"s only work under Windows XP.
As other people have posted elsewhere, until these manufacturers start publishing complete specs or sticking to standards, they're pretty much useless for Linux and BSD users.
In that case I would like a better explanation of how the "feel" is different
That's because it's still Qt, and not Carbon or Cocoa. All it's using are the native widgets, not the framework underneath them.
Some things will necessarily get the OSX "feel", like the print dialog, which is the actual native print dialog. But there's nothing stopping the Qt developer from putting the dialog buttons in non-OSX locations, or remapping keystrokes, for some trivial examples.
People when presented with the most superficial of data will adopt as truth the most extreme or absurd of claims with no critical assessment.
Like those people who see a mimeographed pamphlet at the checkout of the Whole Foods grocery store talking about how ketchup is destroying the ozone layer, then immediately go to their city council to ban ketchup within the city limits.
It's almost as absurd as that. An aquaintance of mine who drives a twenty year old Toyota that leaks oil and betches blue smoke was busy lambasting farmers for destroying the environment because there weren't strict enough government regulation on tractor emissions. He even had a brochure about it in his pocket he picked up at a health food store. When I pointed out the block of toxic waste he called a car, he proudly announced that Toyotas were good for the environment.
Cross-platform toolkits like wxWindows are supposed to deal with this sort of problem by just proxying the native toolkits.
Read his post again. That's not the problem. Qt also proxies the native toolkit on Mac. The look is identical because it's the same. But the *feel* is still wrong no matter what toolkit you use.
Just last week people were saying Gnome/GTK+ was truly "free software" because it was under the LGPL, while Qt was under the business-unfriendly GPL. Sheesh, you can't duck out for a minute in this community, or you'll miss the latest marching orders!
An incredibly difficult thing to get right no matter how simple the syntax. Exception "tarpits" are very sticky indeed.
home-grown String class
Only because the C++ string class is so limited without the use of STL algorithms.
weird non-standard signal/slot extension
Or you could use the weird "standard" signal/slot mechanism of libsig++. But beware of huge template bloat if you do. Signals/slots are an elegant solution that has plagued GUI developers for years. No fumbling with dangling callback pointers. No masses of abstract interfaces. No unreadable macros. Just a simple syntax and you get to connect user events to code.
C++ from ca 1990
Well of course! That was the era of Object Oriented Programming. This decade all the C++ purists are into Generic Programming, and frankly the C++ syntax for GP sucks. Yes you can write C++ in an Industrial Strength Style with full blown template partial specialization and code that causes your eyes to bleed, but please don't subject me to it.
Don't igore the C++ nature of Qt! You don't need to know any of the ugly parts of the language. Qt makes C++ sensible. It's almost as if it were written by people who have to use C++ in their daily work:-)
And spend another hour deselecting all of the unwanted packages to get a lean system? Do this for three mirrors, and you finally decide to just give up. SuSE really needs to provide an ISO image.
Actually I use FreeBSD which has had decent SATA support for a while. Never had a problem with it. And it's part of the standard ATA driver, so you don't have to turn it on.
The reason I was looking as SuSE was because I need a Linux for a tertiary boot for a device driver class I'm starting this weekend. I'm going to go back to Slackware instead. I would try Fedora, but they're still associated with Redhat, and I swore I would never use Redhat again after they called me and all the other KDE distributors criminals.
The safety in a BSL4 lab is negative air-pressure, as a last line of defense. A tray particle can't get wafted out into the corridors. It's the opposite of most facilities, where the air conditioning creates positive air pressure.
How do you make a negative air-pressure failsafe? I can't think of any.
Slashdot Mirror
The biggest advantage is that I am immune to coworkers who insist on "personalizing" their mail with colors, fonts, graphics in their sigs, and "stationary" (shudder).
I love it when I get a one line message on the order of "Yes, I will attend", followed by twelve attachments. Hmmm, what are those, I think to myself. So I go look at them. One's a background image of flowers. Another is the silly corporate logo. A third is the gold bullet image. A fourth is a blue bar images. Etc, etc, etc.
Actually my post was in reference to companies, and not the home user. I sit at work and see a whole squadron of MCSEs busily trying to get security under control and think that the problem just might be related to Microsoft.
The costs of retraining aren't really that much, and in the long run, Unix training is going to be cheaper than Windows training. But retraining is a red herring. The real cost of Windows is its insecurity and instability. How many full time training personnel do you need for Solaris, FreeBSD, or Linux compared to the full time Windows-nursemaids you currently use? I know the answer because my company was once a Solaris shop. We got by then with one trainer and five admins for 1200 employees, while now we still have one trainer, but twenty admins for less than a thousand employees.
They just dont seem to think that not everyone is using a personal home computer.
So why are companies insisting on using operating systems designed for personal home computers?
Given that you have to select an E-mail to delete it, how are users supposed to protect themselves from this one?
Simple. Don't use Windows.
In the case of Bell Labs, they weren't allowed to profit off of a lot of their research (like C and UNIX) because of their monopoly status. In the case of Xerox, they're notable because they're the extreme edge of the bell curve. They could have invented fire and still lost money on the research.
My former company used to spend 14% of the budget on basic research. We were the innovators in our industry. Now that we've been bought out by a huge Eurocorp, we have to beg to get even 4% for the essential product development required to keep up with our competitors.
Would that not cause binary conflicts? I switched to BSD to get away from binary conflict hell.
Read the link, Luke!
This solves the pernicious problem of applying security updates to 500 machines running source-based operating systems. For my single system here at home, it's a trivial matter to apply a patch, compile and install. But for for 500 machines this would be excruciating.
I don't think we are even a little bit closer to that dream today than we were 24 years ago.
The attitude of that professor is still with us as well. A couple of years ago I attended an overview session on Syngo (Siemen's medical software framework). According to the presenter, programmers were obsolete, because all you needed was to write a set of configuration files. Only a few weeks ago a CA Unicenter (systems management) salesman said my project didn't need any developers because all you needed to do was to write some templates.
Locks and crashes caused by apps were common because the task scheduler and memory model were created with scarcity in mind
Only to a small extent. The major reasons for the ubiquitousness of crashes in these systems was pervasive backwards compatibility, and to a lesser extend, the market pressure to release a product before it's ready.
For a tiny consumer product selling for $50, a $25 fee is ridiculous. But the embedded market is much bigger than that. Thinking that all embedded systems must be consumer shrinkwrapped items is like thinking that all operating systems should be applicable to Aunt Tillie's desktop eMachine.
QNX would be overkill on such devices.
And if you really need some expansion capabilities, you always have USB - You can get just about anything in a USB form these days.
Yes, and those "just about anything"s only work under Windows XP.
As other people have posted elsewhere, until these manufacturers start publishing complete specs or sticking to standards, they're pretty much useless for Linux and BSD users.
But kick them in the nuts just as the camera starts rolling, and they might have the right size eyes...
In that case I would like a better explanation of how the "feel" is different
That's because it's still Qt, and not Carbon or Cocoa. All it's using are the native widgets, not the framework underneath them.
Some things will necessarily get the OSX "feel", like the print dialog, which is the actual native print dialog. But there's nothing stopping the Qt developer from putting the dialog buttons in non-OSX locations, or remapping keystrokes, for some trivial examples.
w00t! I beat out 9wm! Go me!
People when presented with the most superficial of data will adopt as truth the most extreme or absurd of claims with no critical assessment.
Like those people who see a mimeographed pamphlet at the checkout of the Whole Foods grocery store talking about how ketchup is destroying the ozone layer, then immediately go to their city council to ban ketchup within the city limits.
It's almost as absurd as that. An aquaintance of mine who drives a twenty year old Toyota that leaks oil and betches blue smoke was busy lambasting farmers for destroying the environment because there weren't strict enough government regulation on tractor emissions. He even had a brochure about it in his pocket he picked up at a health food store. When I pointed out the block of toxic waste he called a car, he proudly announced that Toyotas were good for the environment.
Cross-platform toolkits like wxWindows are supposed to deal with this sort of problem by just proxying the native toolkits.
Read his post again. That's not the problem. Qt also proxies the native toolkit on Mac. The look is identical because it's the same. But the *feel* is still wrong no matter what toolkit you use.
Gnome/GTK+ is GPL'd and truly "free software".
Just last week people were saying Gnome/GTK+ was truly "free software" because it was under the LGPL, while Qt was under the business-unfriendly GPL. Sheesh, you can't duck out for a minute in this community, or you'll miss the latest marching orders!
But I found out so late that it would have seriously messed things up for the Trolltech folks for me to insist on changes
I thought it was kind of weird that this book came out at the very same time you were trashing Qt as unsuitable for UserLinux.
no template (no STL)
The number one thing that confuses newbies
no exception
An incredibly difficult thing to get right no matter how simple the syntax. Exception "tarpits" are very sticky indeed.
home-grown String class
Only because the C++ string class is so limited without the use of STL algorithms.
weird non-standard signal/slot extension
Or you could use the weird "standard" signal/slot mechanism of libsig++. But beware of huge template bloat if you do. Signals/slots are an elegant solution that has plagued GUI developers for years. No fumbling with dangling callback pointers. No masses of abstract interfaces. No unreadable macros. Just a simple syntax and you get to connect user events to code.
C++ from ca 1990
Well of course! That was the era of Object Oriented Programming. This decade all the C++ purists are into Generic Programming, and frankly the C++ syntax for GP sucks. Yes you can write C++ in an Industrial Strength Style with full blown template partial specialization and code that causes your eyes to bleed, but please don't subject me to it.
Go price out the "Deluxe" GNU distribution...
Don't igore the C++ nature of Qt! You don't need to know any of the ugly parts of the language. Qt makes C++ sensible. It's almost as if it were written by people who have to use C++ in their daily work :-)
And spend another hour deselecting all of the unwanted packages to get a lean system? Do this for three mirrors, and you finally decide to just give up. SuSE really needs to provide an ISO image.
Actually I use FreeBSD which has had decent SATA support for a while. Never had a problem with it. And it's part of the standard ATA driver, so you don't have to turn it on.
The reason I was looking as SuSE was because I need a Linux for a tertiary boot for a device driver class I'm starting this weekend. I'm going to go back to Slackware instead. I would try Fedora, but they're still associated with Redhat, and I swore I would never use Redhat again after they called me and all the other KDE distributors criminals.
If you are being mod-bombed, the best thing to do is mail Jamie or one of the Slashdot crew.
Unless they're the mod-bombers. It's been rumoured to happen before...
The safety in a BSL4 lab is negative air-pressure, as a last line of defense. A tray particle can't get wafted out into the corridors. It's the opposite of most facilities, where the air conditioning creates positive air pressure.
How do you make a negative air-pressure failsafe? I can't think of any.
What's next, a remake of Citizen Kane, Casablanca or Blade Runner?
Starring Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Johnny Depp, respectively.