The complete integration of technology into our daily lives seems helpful and nice at first sight. But reconsidering makes me wonder if it's that good at all.
To me the MS like future makes us just more part of a system, of a big machine (Günther Anders' "Weltmaschine") - more time efficiency, smooth and flawless interaction of the human cogwheels.
Where's the freedom of the individual? Where are the 15 minutes you need to recognize your existence?
I wonder whether the growth of the world machine is ever gonna stop. If we are not careful the networked society of today and tomorrow is the beginning of the end of individuality.
Several years ago, in Germany we had a discussion about creating a central database to hold biological data especially of the male population. It was meant to prevent rape because the perpetrator would be pretty easily identified.
The problem that a lot of people miss is that such central databases make it _very_ easy to trace your entire life and doings. Imagine: you go to a pub or bar and drink a beer. You leave genetical evidence on the glass. You touch some wall and leave genetical evidence, you lose a hair in the subway, etc... it would be possible to trace nearly all you do.
I am no criminal. I do not want to be easily traceable.
Next Sunday, there will be a key signing party at FOSDEM in Brussels, Belgium.
Until Friday you have the opportunity to send your key to the organizer of the key signing event; to the event you have to bring your I.D. card or passport as well as a print of your key's fingerprint.
Of course, it's nice to be able to use unix programs on windows using MS's UNIX services, cygwin or the like, but I don't see that as an argument for using Windows as the underlying O/S on a server. Most people aren't choosing Unix only because of some app that runs on top of it, but because the base is actually much more robust than Windows. And in case of Linux/BSD much, much cheaper. (As well as easier to roll out onto several systems, patch, customise, etc)
Not having to completely reinstall the entire system every couple months should be one of the strengths of linux, shouldn't it?
Providing a save upgrade path is what could win the battle at home and especially in companies.
FreeBSD does a great job at this. Gentoo I guess, too. (But you cannot expect Joe Anyone to upgrade an entire system from sources, just think of the time needed)
I hope the binary Linux distributions will improve more in this regard.
First, some resource for GNUstep (for the lazy ones):
http://www.gnustep.org - Main GNUstep site http://wiki.gnustep.org - GNUstep Wiki, lots of tips and hints http://www.gnustep.net - collection of docs, Build Guide http://www.gnustep.it - Tutorials, applications, etc http://www.gnustep.de - some German translations but also English information
Second, GNUstep makes pretty good progress these days. Gorm, the Interface Builder clone, is rather stable and _very_ nice to use. Also there is now Renaissance, another way to build an interface. (Renaissance is also usable on OS X!) Within the next months there will be a new and well done text system.
The base system has been stable for about a year now, and the gui classes are mostly usable - a lot of gnustep applications were released some time ago.
For your unix desktops you could probably use NFS or the like. Just install Mozilla with some reasonable defaults on a server and export the folder to your clients. There might be troubles with Mozilla's caching and profiles but I guess it's possible.
Another idea might be the usage of scp to easily copy a setup'd, customized mozilla folder to the clients. This might actually work with win32 clients, too.
A side note: Last week I watched some of the Tivoli demos from IBM. (I didn't like the interface at all.) But wouldn't be an opensource, crossplatform central management/deployment just rock? What's most crucial is an uselful UI, the actual work might be easily done by existing tools like scp et al. - Or is there already some project taking on that task?
Would be great if those who already completed their downloads of the iso files could share them using their favourite peer2peer program to take some load off of the FTP servers.
In win32 there isn't even a normal function for getting a dir-listing... you have to write a complex searchfiles function. And the complete API is just so damn broken, I sometimes want to jump off the house leaving a letter "It's all cuz Bill G."... programming can be easy and intuitive, fast and actually fun - but it's not with the win32 API.
I hope to leave all the damn win32 shit far behind soon and actually start coding on Linux. (That sentence in god's ear)
Maybe 'cause it would take much too long to write such a page, m u c h to long
But I will clarify some win myths anyway...
- "Windows is the o/s with the most ease of use" -> Is someone gonna to write a page comparing the current Windows and NeXTstep? or MacOSX???? (We all know who are the winners)
- 'Linux is a UNIX-like operating system and is therefore complex to configure and manage.' -> Should someone that isn't able to edit a config file or to play around with the shell or does not understand the system internals set up and administrate a system that should run well and be secure? - No.
- '[...] commercial support services for Linux will be fee-based and will likely be priced at a premium. These costs have to be factored into the total cost model.' -> You don't even get a windows manual for free when you pay hundrets or thousands for MicroSuck s/w.
- 'Linux system administrators must spend huge amounts of time understanding the latest Linux bugs and determining what to do about them.' -> The German NTSP5 was destroying the entire system of a friend; even if it was installed directly after a clean NT install!
Damn. I don't care whether a girl is computer interested or not - she does not even have to look like a model or so. If I like her then I like her - simple, isn't it?
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The complete integration of technology into our daily lives seems helpful and nice at first sight. But reconsidering makes me wonder if it's that good at all.
To me the MS like future makes us just more part of a system, of a big machine (Günther Anders' "Weltmaschine") - more time efficiency, smooth and flawless interaction of the human cogwheels.
Where's the freedom of the individual? Where are the 15 minutes you need to recognize your existence?
I wonder whether the growth of the world machine is ever gonna stop. If we are not careful the networked society of today and tomorrow is the beginning of the end of individuality.
Several years ago, in Germany we had a discussion about creating a central database to hold biological data especially of the male population. It was meant to prevent rape because the perpetrator would be pretty easily identified.
The problem that a lot of people miss is that such central databases make it _very_ easy to trace your entire life and doings.
Imagine: you go to a pub or bar and drink a beer. You leave genetical evidence on the glass. You touch some wall and leave genetical evidence, you lose a hair in the subway, etc... it would be possible to trace nearly all you do.
I am no criminal. I do not want to be easily traceable.
Until Friday you have the opportunity to send your key to the organizer of the key signing event; to the event you have to bring your I.D. card or passport as well as a print of your key's fingerprint.
The thing that would help GNUstep most may be the inclusion of Apple's ObjC++ into the main GCC branch.
:-)
The Apple developers are really keen on doing that but some gcc people seem to be scared that the ObjC++ stuff might break the current code
However, I hope they solve the problems. Would make Chimera easily portable to GNUstep...
What you say is very true.
Before OS X the Mac was primarily a shareware platform, but today most tools by private/hobby developers are released under some open source license.
I guess a lot of the cocoa applications could be easily ported to GNUstep, thus be available on about every UNIX flavour (that GNUstep runs on).
Sorry, just found the link I was searching to underline my argumentation: http://bsd.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/11/21/14 13247&mode=thread
Of course, it's nice to be able to use unix programs on windows using MS's UNIX services, cygwin or the like, but I don't see that as an argument for using Windows as the underlying O/S on a server.
Most people aren't choosing Unix only because of some app that runs on top of it, but because the base is actually much more robust than Windows. And in case of Linux/BSD much, much cheaper. (As well as easier to roll out onto several systems, patch, customise, etc)
Just my EUR 0.02...
Not having to completely reinstall the entire system every couple months should be one of the strengths of linux, shouldn't it?
Providing a save upgrade path is what could win the battle at home and especially in companies.
FreeBSD does a great job at this. Gentoo I guess, too. (But you cannot expect Joe Anyone to upgrade an entire system from sources, just think of the time needed)
I hope the binary Linux distributions will improve more in this regard.
I'm curious what (pixel) refresh rates the Mac LCD displays have.
Maybe somebody here does know it?
>
Shouldn't that read: XXX compatible suits in all offices?
First, some resource for GNUstep (for the lazy ones):
http://www.gnustep.org - Main GNUstep site
http://wiki.gnustep.org - GNUstep Wiki, lots of tips and hints
http://www.gnustep.net - collection of docs, Build Guide
http://www.gnustep.it - Tutorials, applications, etc
http://www.gnustep.de - some German translations but also English information
Second, GNUstep makes pretty good progress these days. Gorm, the Interface Builder clone, is rather stable and _very_ nice to use. Also there is now Renaissance, another way to build an interface. (Renaissance is also usable on OS X!)
Within the next months there will be a new and well done text system.
The base system has been stable for about a year now, and the gui classes are mostly usable - a lot of gnustep applications were released some time ago.
For your unix desktops you could probably use NFS or the like. Just install Mozilla with some reasonable defaults on a server and export the folder to your clients. There might be troubles with Mozilla's caching and profiles but I guess it's possible.
Another idea might be the usage of scp to easily copy a setup'd, customized mozilla folder to the clients. This might actually work with win32 clients, too.
A side note: Last week I watched some of the Tivoli demos from IBM. (I didn't like the interface at all.) But wouldn't be an opensource, crossplatform central management/deployment just rock? What's most crucial is an uselful UI, the actual work might be easily done by existing tools like scp et al. - Or is there already some project taking on that task?
> What in the hell are those Germans hiding? ...that we have some norms and standards for just about anything :)
Would be great if those who already completed their downloads of the iso files could share them using their favourite peer2peer program to take some load off of the FTP servers.
Hell yeah!
I'm a not-so-long programmer.
In win32 there isn't even a normal function for getting a dir-listing... you have to write a complex searchfiles function. And the complete API is just so damn broken, I sometimes want to jump off the house leaving a letter "It's all cuz Bill G."... programming can be easy and intuitive, fast and actually fun - but it's not with the win32 API.
I hope to leave all the damn win32 shit far behind soon and actually start coding on Linux. (That sentence in god's ear)
Why not write a "Win Myths"-page?
Maybe 'cause it would take much too long to write such a page, m u c h to long
But I will clarify some win myths anyway...
- "Windows is the o/s with the most ease of use"
-> Is someone gonna to write a page comparing the current Windows and NeXTstep? or MacOSX???? (We all know who are the winners)
- 'Linux is a UNIX-like operating system and is therefore complex to configure and manage.'
-> Should someone that isn't able to edit a config file or to play around with the shell or does not understand the system internals set up and administrate a system that should run well and be secure? - No.
- '[...] commercial support services for Linux will be fee-based and will likely be priced at a premium. These costs have to be factored into the total cost model.'
-> You don't even get a windows manual for free when you pay hundrets or thousands for MicroSuck s/w.
- 'Linux system administrators must spend huge amounts of time understanding the latest Linux bugs and determining what to do about them.'
-> The German NTSP5 was destroying the entire system of a friend; even if it was installed directly after a clean NT install!
Et cetera, et cetera...
- root 66
p.s.: Wasn't every non-unix o/s a step back?
I am male.
I am a geek.
And you seem to - SUCK!
Damn. I don't care whether a girl is computer interested or not - she does not even have to look like a model or so. If I like her then I like her - simple, isn't it?
- root 66