I had to work on a mac for the last two weeks. I have to confess that I had real difficulties switching from Windows to Apple...(I do work on KDE/Linux too) Finder/Application is probably the most difficult (relatively speaking )concept to apprehrend when you come from the windows world...
The overall impression that they are simply too many windows:-). The desk quickly becomes a mess. the Application top menu is sometimes confusing. Some keys aren't even represented like [] (on a QWERTY keyboard), you have to google to find the combo.
And these buzzwords coming from the marketing department.
And the working language is French...Seriously it looks like:
"Notre nouvelle target est de monetizer le web 2.0 en investissant un maximum sur le end-consumer par le double opt-in, le seul outil marketing legally safe dans ce pays. Any question?" (heavy french accent included)
Microsoft cannot sue any European companies on software patents...Because there is no software patent in Europe (with very few exceptions). Only copyright can prevail in Europe (particularly in the MS case). Thus there is no point for Mandriva to protect itself from a non-existant threat.
He is a visionary. He saw that the Internet was going to be a vast interconnected jungle. he set up a directory to store the various web sites. Extremely useful at that time.
Everything was managed manually with the technology of these early days.
He is not a genius but he is truly imaginative and most importantly hard worker.
Well Why should we send organic form of life in space? They are too fragile and too sensible to things like Gamma rays, time and etc. and they require amounts of energy to keep an athmosphere, a correct temperature or food.
Our body is adapted to earth. It is a splendid tool but not adapted for space.
Why future generations won't opt for another kind of body? I mean if technology goes as far as planned why should they travel in an organic body? We can already see more robust and versatile technologies to be used in space. Robots are already on Mars because their body is adapted to Martian conditions.
It won't look as romantic as seeing an astronaut, but it will be extremely more efficient.
The design is cool...But what should I pay extra subscription? I live in Europe. I've got a 3G mobile phone, I can already browse the web, I can receive/send emails, I can use wifi. It does play MP3 or video clips, I can use it as a modem on the road and tons of other features that I've never tried.
Everything they claim as innovation, exist already. The only new and cool feature is their new ergonomy. Hardly an argument to push new monthly fees.
Docomo (Japan) had a similar problems while coming here in Europe. They thought that their mobile phones would be so superior to the European competitors that they would gain vast market shares in few months. They were correct their own HTML/hybrid stuff was superior to the existing WAP protocol at that time. They were wrong because operators had already invested into UMTS/EDGE infrastructure and true HTML browsers were imminent. Only few minor operators have bought DOCOMO licenses. I used to see DOCOMO compatible phones in the shops few years ago. Now they have disapeared.
The only true foreign innovation used massively is Blackberry because it was "useful" and truely innovative.
The consumer won't probably notice it. But the customs officer will. The goal of all these hollograms is to ban the export of these products to markets such as EU, USA or Japan. The cash cows of Microsoft,Nokia and so on.
They are extremely difficult to copy perfectly and custom officer are trained to recognize them.
I'm currently finishing an C# Mono application made with MonoDevelop. To be fair, MonoDevelop doesn't even propose all the Visual Studio 2003 features. But for an application with no UI interface, it does the job perfectly. If you are a Visual Studio user like me, this is the best tool you can find on Linux IMHO.
I have even developped a small Windows based client for this server application, again written with MonoDevelop and their Windows Form libraries that mimick approximatly all C#.NET methods and events. (there are still some problems with stuff like MonthCalendar and all, but I didn't need it, I just needed ToolBar and ListView). I tried other stuff like GTK but it was too different from Windows Form and I didn't have the time to study it.
It requires strictly no Linux skills. All you need is to download a distro like OpenSuse and MonoDevelop RPM and that's all.
Well I was thinking about a small multi-layered SWF movie. Different polygons are randomly generated to form letters and why not playing with alpha channels, frames, a bit of ActionScript etc.
You can still get perfectly readable letters with such a technique while making the whole thing totally impossible to read for OCR-based captcha techniques.
Sure...If it becomes too popular they will break it, but in the meantime you can get a pretty decent revenue. Anybody interested?:-)
And that's the whole point.
Your colleagues were looking for high-end spec while most of the buyers are looking at prices.
I work mainly as sub-contractors for communication agencies. Most are 100% Mac. My job is mainly doing the technical part of their projects (database, Web services coding, etc.).
And you know what?
My current laptop (Acer) costs me +/- 700 USD. Because I don't need any big video card, nor tons of RAMs nor screen bigger than 15'4 (because I'm truly "mobile" and these monsters don't enter into my bag) All I need is decent laptop to open MS Visual Studio, Putty/Emacs, my 60 GB HD is almost too big for my need. I still can sync it with a external HD for backup and that's all.
I don't need the horsepowers that come usually with Apple.
I buy a new laptop each 3 years.
"France were quite content to look the other way on Saddam Hussein's atrocities because they had a nice trade relationship with him. They were widely criticized for this "cheese eating surrender monkey" approach."
1. Correction: they were widely criticized in the US. Americans were convinced that it was part of the war against terrorism while the Frenchmen were not. Do you remember these so called Al Qaeda bases in Iraq? Or these Iraqi chemical stocks, the mobile lab? The fake British report? I do. de Villepin speech was acclaimed by most foreign countries. I stil remember it. 2. The US supported Saddam when he invaded Iran (just like France, Germany and countless of other western countries). 3. Nobody reacted when he gazed Kurds in the 80's. 4. Nobody tried to support the Shia uprising after the first Gulf war.
Of course the real US agenda was different (securing oil production, stabilization of the region, etc.) and the American agenda was in opposition with some French interests (French oil companies had secured extremely lucrative deal in Iraq prior to the invasion).
The US had a "grand vision" of the middle east (getting rid of dictators, bringing democracy and western values, securing this major oil source). the French government didn't share it and they wanted to protect their own interests. Both failed miserably.
Ok here is the deal. You will be the only industrialized country to respect the Kyoto treaty and the rest of the world takes care of this Asteroid hunt. Ok?:-)
Why is there no services using Webdav (AKA Web Folder for Windows)? It is quite simple to setup (Apache + webdav module). it is a built-in feature in all OS (except Windows 98 IMHO). You can use HTTP Basic Authentification or something more secured with SSL. And your app will be fully integrated with your client's OS.
I have developped a large extranet service based on this technology. Pretty simple. You can choose either 100% JAVA based application (and using TOMCAT and all) or Apache 1.X (or 2.X). You don't have to build anykind of windows based application or complex web services (emulating the drag and drop feature).
It supports versionning, locking files, etc. On the server side, you can use (AFAIK) symbolic links, and so on. It can be easily used as a file sharing server for people working from different locations and with different accounts.
In Europe there is a "huge" market ahead. A lot of public administrations are going to move from Windows to Linux. Politicians have been lobbied hard by open source advocates in the past years and open source software have been officially recommended by a lot of European government.
I suspect there is a comparable change in asiatic countries. Dell must be prepared to respond to this demand.
Err...If you are a citizen of a member of the Schengen treaty (15 European countries have implemented it, 15 others mainly middle/eastern european countries are about to join it). You can freely move anywhere.
If you are from a Schengen country. You only need your ID card with you. If you aren't you need your passport. (ex: British citizen) If you country requires a visa. You only need a Visa once to visit these countries.
I don't know where you are from, but beeing a Belgian I Have never been controlled except in France (De Gaule Airport, few weeks after the New York tragic events) and it was pretty fast. Last year I visited Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain and I have never experienced any of your problems.
What truly matters for a start-up is the team behind the business plan. I can easily hire a good consultant to write the business plan (and I did it once). I will add a nice SWAT chapter, a competition review (based on a Jupiter analysis), 3 years projection (with 3 different projections: pessismitic, break-en, optimistic) and so on...You know that they expect a break even on the first year and a 120% ROI on the second year? Well simply change your Excel sheet.
Investors (at least experienced ones) know that the reality will be different from your business plan. It will just help you to structure your ideas and nothing more.
So what they are truly looking for is a team. Personnalities, experiences, motivation, etc.. And of course the idea.
If you want to be a CEO...You have to prove your leadership and your ability to convince the right people to join your boat, (or at least be ready to join in once there are some money). Otherwise you will remain a brilliant isolated inventor/engineer/salesman...
IMHO 70% for the team, 30% for the idea/product/service/whatever.
This was my biggest mistake. And my biggest success was to recognize it:-)
The new website (a new template for Typo3, their CMS, looks cool but it's way to wide and/or inflexible.
Typo3... Inflexible? Are you kidding? There are hundreds of different extensions and you can do everything you want with their built-in script language.
The biggest typo3 problems IMHO are the lack of a serious debug tool and a structured objects environment (now it looks a bit like a mess).
Anyway this is by far the most powerful Open source CMS i've ever used. I'd recommend it for any project such as Blender.org any day.
Re:7 centuries isn't feasible for humans
on
Interstellar Ark
·
· Score: 1
Latin was still extremely useful at that time especially in science and in other intellectual work (laws, philosophy, politics, etc.). It was used as a Lingua Franca just like English today. Kepler wrote his theory in Latin, Galileo too. Erasmus had all his correspondance in Latin. just like Vesalius or Spinoza. Galileo didn't understand a word of German (IMHO) just like Kepler couldn't understand a word of Galileo Italian's dialect (IMHO). Even Erasmus (Dutch) and Vesalius (Flemish) would have difficulties to understand each other. The first one spoke Dutch while the second one spoke a Flemish dialect. Newton would have never heard of Kepler or Tycho Brahe works without Latin. The Famous Newton book was originally titled "Principia" (1687) (translated in English : 1729)...
Printing and nation-state changed all this. Dictionnaries became more common and nation states needed a common language for the mass. It started first in France IMHO where French was taught in school and "dialects" were forbidden.
Of course Latin changed during all these centuries. Its grammar/construction in the middle age would have been barely understandable by a Imperial Roman.
Most of these newspapers are at least 60 years old. Somes are more than 100 years old. Nobody is really interested by Belgian news except Belgian themselves. Belgians know these newspapers names and URLs already. I really doubt that Google has any significant impact on their trafic.
Their market is 4.2 millions of Belgian frenchspeakers, not the whole world.
They are stupid, I don't share their point of view but I really doubt that it will hurt their business.
Yes you are right. But don't despair, I know a small company that install on regular basis files server (SAMBA) in companies like Electrabel which is one of the biggest company in Belgium. I guess this is the first step in the business world.
Concerning politicians they make big news and we still have to see any "real" initiative. The last big investment in a non windows environment I've noticed so far in the Frenchspeaking region, was the Frenchspeaking education administration ordering thousands of...first generation IMac end of the nineties (not even MacosX;-) ).
I thought that Linux was always bigger than MS in Europe already, was I wrong?
Yes your are (still) wrong. but it depends of the market we are talking about. If you mean the web server market, clearly Linux won. If you mean the desktop PC market, Linux is almost non-existant.
Concerning corporate/administration networks, each migration from Windows to Linux makes headlines (Munich city, French Police/Gendarmerie with Open Office, Swedish army, etc.). So I guess it is still considered as "extraordinary" events. Most are still running Windows. But it may change with the official support for Open standard/format that I've seen in recent call of tenders. Microsoft will clearly lose a big advantage.
The situation in Europe isn't that different from the US, except maybe that the Microsoft lobby is less powerful.
Slashdot Mirror
I had to work on a mac for the last two weeks. ...
:-). The desk quickly becomes a mess. the Application top menu is sometimes confusing. Some keys aren't even represented like [] (on a QWERTY keyboard), you have to google to find the combo.
I have to confess that I had real difficulties switching from Windows to Apple...(I do work on KDE/Linux too) Finder/Application is probably the most difficult (relatively speaking )concept to apprehrend when you come from the windows world
The overall impression that they are simply too many windows
What I do really hate are.
"Monetize"
"Web 2.0"
And these buzzwords coming from the marketing department.
And the working language is French...Seriously it looks like:
"Notre nouvelle target est de monetizer le web 2.0 en investissant un maximum sur le end-consumer par le double opt-in, le seul outil marketing legally safe dans ce pays. Any question?" (heavy french accent included)
And they think they look smart...
Microsoft cannot sue any European companies on software patents...Because there is no software patent in Europe (with very few exceptions). Only copyright can prevail in Europe (particularly in the MS case). Thus there is no point for Mandriva to protect itself from a non-existant threat.
They can live without sex but not without porn
He is a visionary.
He saw that the Internet was going to be a vast interconnected jungle. he set up a directory to store the various web sites. Extremely useful at that time.
Everything was managed manually with the technology of these early days.
He is not a genius but he is truly imaginative and most importantly hard worker.
Well Why should we send organic form of life in space?
They are too fragile and too sensible to things like Gamma rays, time and etc. and they require amounts of energy to keep an athmosphere, a correct temperature or food.
Our body is adapted to earth. It is a splendid tool but not adapted for space.
Why future generations won't opt for another kind of body? I mean if technology goes as far as planned why should they travel in an organic body? We can already see more robust and versatile technologies to be used in space. Robots are already on Mars because their body is adapted to Martian conditions.
It won't look as romantic as seeing an astronaut, but it will be extremely more efficient.
The design is cool...But what should I pay extra subscription?
I live in Europe. I've got a 3G mobile phone, I can already browse the web, I can receive/send emails, I can use wifi. It does play MP3 or video clips, I can use it as a modem on the road and tons of other features that I've never tried.
Everything they claim as innovation, exist already. The only new and cool feature is their new ergonomy. Hardly an argument to push new monthly fees.
Docomo (Japan) had a similar problems while coming here in Europe. They thought that their mobile phones would be so superior to the European competitors that they would gain vast market shares in few months. They were correct their own HTML/hybrid stuff was superior to the existing WAP protocol at that time. They were wrong because operators had already invested into UMTS/EDGE infrastructure and true HTML browsers were imminent. Only few minor operators have bought DOCOMO licenses. I used to see DOCOMO compatible phones in the shops few years ago. Now they have disapeared.
The only true foreign innovation used massively is Blackberry because it was "useful" and truely innovative.
The consumer won't probably notice it. But the customs officer will.
The goal of all these hollograms is to ban the export of these products to markets such as EU, USA or Japan. The cash cows of Microsoft,Nokia and so on.
They are extremely difficult to copy perfectly and custom officer are trained to recognize them.
I'm currently finishing an C# Mono application made with MonoDevelop.
.NET methods and events. (there are still some problems with stuff like MonthCalendar and all, but I didn't need it, I just needed ToolBar and ListView). I tried other stuff like GTK but it was too different from Windows Form and I didn't have the time to study it.
To be fair, MonoDevelop doesn't even propose all the Visual Studio 2003 features.
But for an application with no UI interface, it does the job perfectly. If you are a Visual Studio user like me, this is the best tool you can find on Linux IMHO.
I have even developped a small Windows based client for this server application, again written with MonoDevelop and their Windows Form libraries that mimick approximatly all C#
It requires strictly no Linux skills. All you need is to download a distro like OpenSuse and MonoDevelop RPM and that's all.
[snip] the smart ass answer
>> 5. Am I correct that programming in and selling BSD-based
>> boxes won't raise any of the above problems?
>What are BSD boxes?
A Computer running BSD. Genius.
Well I was thinking about a small multi-layered SWF movie. Different polygons are randomly generated to form letters and why not playing with alpha channels, frames, a bit of ActionScript etc. You can still get perfectly readable letters with such a technique while making the whole thing totally impossible to read for OCR-based captcha techniques. Sure...If it becomes too popular they will break it, but in the meantime you can get a pretty decent revenue. Anybody interested? :-)
And that's the whole point. Your colleagues were looking for high-end spec while most of the buyers are looking at prices. I work mainly as sub-contractors for communication agencies. Most are 100% Mac. My job is mainly doing the technical part of their projects (database, Web services coding, etc.). And you know what? My current laptop (Acer) costs me +/- 700 USD. Because I don't need any big video card, nor tons of RAMs nor screen bigger than 15'4 (because I'm truly "mobile" and these monsters don't enter into my bag) All I need is decent laptop to open MS Visual Studio, Putty/Emacs, my 60 GB HD is almost too big for my need. I still can sync it with a external HD for backup and that's all. I don't need the horsepowers that come usually with Apple. I buy a new laptop each 3 years.
hold on,
Europe has plenty of churches, cathedrals and the like
"France were quite content to look the other way on Saddam Hussein's atrocities because they had a nice trade relationship with him. They were widely criticized for this "cheese eating surrender monkey" approach."
1. Correction: they were widely criticized in the US.
Americans were convinced that it was part of the war against terrorism while the Frenchmen were not. Do you remember these so called Al Qaeda bases in Iraq? Or these Iraqi chemical stocks, the mobile lab? The fake British report? I do. de Villepin speech was acclaimed by most foreign countries. I stil remember it.
2. The US supported Saddam when he invaded Iran (just like France, Germany and countless of other western countries).
3. Nobody reacted when he gazed Kurds in the 80's.
4. Nobody tried to support the Shia uprising after the first Gulf war.
Of course the real US agenda was different (securing oil production, stabilization of the region, etc.) and the American agenda was in opposition with some French interests (French oil companies had secured extremely lucrative deal in Iraq prior to the invasion).
The US had a "grand vision" of the middle east (getting rid of dictators, bringing democracy and western values, securing this major oil source). the French government didn't share it and they wanted to protect their own interests. Both failed miserably.
Ok here is the deal. You will be the only industrialized country to respect the Kyoto treaty and the rest of the world takes care of this Asteroid hunt. :-)
Ok?
you meant 64KB?
Why is there no services using Webdav (AKA Web Folder for Windows)?
It is quite simple to setup (Apache + webdav module). it is a built-in feature in all OS (except Windows 98 IMHO). You can use HTTP Basic Authentification or something more secured with SSL. And your app will be fully integrated with your client's OS.
I have developped a large extranet service based on this technology. Pretty simple. You can choose either 100% JAVA based application (and using TOMCAT and all) or Apache 1.X (or 2.X). You don't have to build anykind of windows based application or complex web services (emulating the drag and drop feature).
It supports versionning, locking files, etc. On the server side, you can use (AFAIK) symbolic links, and so on. It can be easily used as a file sharing server for people working from different locations and with different accounts.
Olivier
In Europe there is a "huge" market ahead. A lot of public administrations are going to move from Windows to Linux. Politicians have been lobbied hard by open source advocates in the past years and open source software have been officially recommended by a lot of European government.
I suspect there is a comparable change in asiatic countries.
Dell must be prepared to respond to this demand.
Err...If you are a citizen of a member of the Schengen treaty (15 European countries have implemented it, 15 others mainly middle/eastern european countries are about to join it).
You can freely move anywhere.
More information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schengen_Agreement
If you are from a Schengen country. You only need your ID card with you.
If you aren't you need your passport. (ex: British citizen)
If you country requires a visa. You only need a Visa once to visit these countries.
I don't know where you are from, but beeing a Belgian I Have never been controlled except in France (De Gaule Airport, few weeks after the New York tragic events) and it was pretty fast. Last year I visited Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain and I have never experienced any of your problems.
What truly matters for a start-up is the team behind the business plan.
I can easily hire a good consultant to write the business plan (and I did it once). I will add a nice SWAT chapter, a competition review (based on a Jupiter analysis), 3 years projection (with 3 different projections: pessismitic, break-en, optimistic) and so on...You know that they expect a break even on the first year and a 120% ROI on the second year? Well simply change your Excel sheet.
Investors (at least experienced ones) know that the reality will be different from your business plan. It will just help you to structure your ideas and nothing more.
So what they are truly looking for is a team. Personnalities, experiences, motivation, etc..
And of course the idea.
If you want to be a CEO...You have to prove your leadership and your ability to convince the right people to join your boat, (or at least be ready to join in once there are some money). Otherwise you will remain a brilliant isolated inventor/engineer/salesman...
IMHO 70% for the team, 30% for the idea/product/service/whatever.
This was my biggest mistake. And my biggest success was to recognize it
Olivier
The new website (a new template for Typo3, their CMS, looks cool but it's way to wide and/or inflexible.
Typo3... Inflexible? Are you kidding? There are hundreds of different extensions and you can do everything you want with their built-in script language.
The biggest typo3 problems IMHO are the lack of a serious debug tool and a structured objects environment (now it looks a bit like a mess).
Anyway this is by far the most powerful Open source CMS i've ever used. I'd recommend it for any project such as Blender.org any day.
Latin was still extremely useful at that time especially in science and in other intellectual work (laws, philosophy, politics, etc.). It was used as a Lingua Franca just like English today. Kepler wrote his theory in Latin, Galileo too. Erasmus had all his correspondance in Latin. just like Vesalius or Spinoza. ...
Galileo didn't understand a word of German (IMHO) just like Kepler couldn't understand a word of Galileo Italian's dialect (IMHO). Even Erasmus (Dutch) and Vesalius (Flemish) would have difficulties to understand each other. The first one spoke Dutch while the second one spoke a Flemish dialect. Newton would have never heard of Kepler or Tycho Brahe works without Latin. The Famous Newton book was originally titled "Principia" (1687) (translated in English : 1729)
Printing and nation-state changed all this. Dictionnaries became more common and nation states needed a common language for the mass. It started first in France IMHO where French was taught in school and "dialects" were forbidden.
Of course Latin changed during all these centuries. Its grammar/construction in the middle age would have been barely understandable by a Imperial Roman.
Most of these newspapers are at least 60 years old. Somes are more than 100 years old. Nobody is really interested by Belgian news except Belgian themselves. Belgians know these newspapers names and URLs already. I really doubt that Google has any significant impact on their trafic.
Their market is 4.2 millions of Belgian frenchspeakers, not the whole world.
They are stupid, I don't share their point of view but I really doubt that it will hurt their business.
I'm Frenchspeaking Belgian :-).
;-) ).
Yes you are right. But don't despair, I know a small company that install on regular basis files server (SAMBA) in companies like Electrabel which is one of the biggest company in Belgium. I guess this is the first step in the business world.
Concerning politicians they make big news and we still have to see any "real" initiative. The last big investment in a non windows environment I've noticed so far in the Frenchspeaking region, was the Frenchspeaking education administration ordering thousands of...first generation IMac end of the nineties (not even MacosX
I thought that Linux was always bigger than MS in Europe already, was I wrong?
Yes your are (still) wrong. but it depends of the market we are talking about. If you mean the web server market, clearly Linux won. If you mean the desktop PC market, Linux is almost non-existant.
Concerning corporate/administration networks, each migration from Windows to Linux makes headlines (Munich city, French Police/Gendarmerie with Open Office, Swedish army, etc.). So I guess it is still considered as "extraordinary" events. Most are still running Windows. But it may change with the official support for Open standard/format that I've seen in recent call of tenders. Microsoft will clearly lose a big advantage.
The situation in Europe isn't that different from the US, except maybe that the Microsoft lobby is less powerful.