...see if you can sort out the swing, awt, eclipse native widget fiasco.
What's there to work out? First, Java's license doesn't allow integration into Mozilla; it's merely a proprietary add-on package. Second, what relevance does Java have to the browser anymore?
Furthermore, the "widget fiasco" is one of Sun's own making: it is Sun that insists on forcing Swing down everybody's throat. Mozilla would naturally use XUL/Java integration for its GUI.
J2EE seems strong at the backend.
You're confusing flab and muscle.
With a strong frontend, maybe MS has to react for a change.
MS has reacted, and they have reacted well: they brought out.NET, something that fixes many of the problems with Java. Furthermore,.NET doesn't try to be cross-platform, so it avoids the costs and complexities resulting from cross-platform support.
The question is whether open source will respond to.NET. Sun hasn't responded yet, since Java remains proprietary and cross-platform. Mono seems like the best response to date: it's open, open source, uses existing open source toolkits, and much of it is platform-specific--specific to open source platforms.
Perhaps, but after looking at the 700+ page spec, which, by the way, has dependencies on almost every spec ever issued by the W3C... I kind of doubt it.
A 700 page spec that reuses W3C specs still beats Flash, a complex binary format that nobody supports.
To be a bit more specific, SVG encompasses so much that a fully compliant implementation must support not only the massive spec, but also ECMA Script, SMIL, MathML, etc.
Yes, and the same functionality is present in Flash (when it isn't, as in MathML, it's a deficiency). Now, when you try to do your own implementation of Flash, you have to start from scratch, trying to implement Macromedia's counterpart to ECMA Script, SMIL, etc. How is that better? At least with an SVG implementation, you can reuse existing ECMA Script, SMIL, MathML, XML, etc. tools and implementations.
Furthermore, there are several levels of SVG. I suspect most implementations will rely on the simplest level, which is a straightforward, modern vector graphics format based on XML, something that the world really does need. And it is a need that Flash does not fulfill.
Its a very good theory - we have got bits of Mars on Earth, and its highly unlikely that bits of Earth haven't gone the other way.
Of course, bits of earth have gone the other way. But whether bacteria have survived the trip and whether they have survived on Mars is another question. Perhaps they did initially survive, then die, then something else sprung up. We won't know until we look, and we can't look anymore once it's been contaminated.
Bacteria can easily get across interplanetary space
You're jumping to conclusions--there is no evidence of that yet. It's plausible, but that's all. Until we actually observe it, we don't know. And there are a lot of things that "getting across interplanetary space" could mean.
but algae and fungi are a lot less likely to do so
Again, we don't know. Eucaryotic spores can be very hardy, too.
Which is exactly why we should send a manned mission with a microbiologist or two who can spend a year and a half looking at various types of sediment for hundreds of kilometers.
For that amount of money and effort, we can send literally hundreds of unmanned probes. The overall risk with the unmanned probes is going to be much lower and the overall scientific benefit is much greater.
Manned travel to Mars just makes no financial or scientific sense at this point.
NASA has never lost a human in space, so sending them on a 1.5 year mission is actually safer than throwing them to orbit.
Why would "losing a human in space" be a big concern in deciding whether to send a manned mission to Mars? That wasn't a concern during any of the other great explorations of humankind. But the sad fact is that safety just isn't what makes manned interplanetary missions disproportionately expensive, it's the weight and basic requirements of human beings in general that do.
Russia continued to burn up RTGs even after we'd stopped. One satellite actually burned up over Canada. No deaths were ever linked to the incident, but Canada made a big stink over it and had Russia pay for reparations.
Yeah, and no specific cancer deaths have ever been linked to smoking either. The only "link" that exists is that we have had two similar populations, those who smoked and those who didn't, and have been able to compare their rates of lung cancer. Unfortunately, we can't make that comparison for Pu release in the atmosphere: you either release Pu over Canada or you don't and nobody can prove anything definitive about the number of deaths resulting from that.
You'll have to forgive me, but they *really* piss me off. Even a *little* bit of research would show them that the risk is practically nill. In fact, there's much more risk from all the other chemicals on the rocket than from the RTG.
Sure, the risk from a single RTG is probably low. But once we accept that, where does it end? How many RTGs do we send up? How much fissionable material do we allow in orbit? You are terminally naive if you think that the issue is as simple as "putting an RTG on a Mars rover is low-risk". There are lots of legal, medical, and political questions and people like you aren't answering them. In fact, your kind just seems too clueless to realize that those questions even exist.
The notion that Mars has been contaminated via meteor impacts is still a theory. It's a plausible theory, but just a theory. It's, in fact, a theory we could try to confirm by examining what kind of life, if any, exists on Mars. That in itself would be a spectacular scientific result.
But once Mars has been contaminated by bacteria from earth, that opportunity is gone because we won't be able to distinguish bacteria we brought from bacteria that traveled via meteor impact.
Well, I never claimed that Sun "invented" mobile code with Jini,
Sure you did; that's what the term "using the idea [...] from Jini" means, and you yourself indicate later that you don't seem to know of any previous systems:
Glad to see PARC is using the idea of mobile code from Jini.
So, seriously, what other past implementations of this have there been? I am really curious.
Lots of Lisp and Scheme systems, plus many other systems based on scripting languages like Tcl. Many database systems have used mobile code extensively, including sandboxing (clients would send Pascal or Basic code to the database server to speed up queries). It used to be part of distributed programming, then it became software agents. Several of them, of course, offered sandboxing, because one obviously needs that for that kind of system.
As for your cracks about the real problem being a Java-based implementation, I will take it you are one of those "if it ain't GPL it ain't free" zealots.
As before, you are wrong and jumping to conclusions. No, in this case, I'm not referring to the fact that Java is proprietary software, I'm pointing out that it sucks technically at these kinds of applications: it has a bloated runtime, a poorly conceived system for sandboxing, and an unnecessarily complex reflection system.
And if Jini and Obje address different problems, perhaps you can enlighten me just what problems they each address that is so different, 'cuz it looks pretty identical to this Jini programer.
Jini fails to address the problem of ontological mappings between service descriptions, Obje tries to (but ignores at least a decade of prior work).
Do you seriously believe that Sun invented mobile code with Jini or Java? In reality, none of that stuff is new. Just about every idea in Jini was taken from other systems, and the combination also doesn't really offer much that is new. In any case, PARC's Obje addresses a different problem. But the problem it addresses has also been addressed before. If at least the new implementations were simpler and more open than their predecessors, but, being Java based, both Jini and Obje are actually worse.
Not surprisingly, people have been working on this for many years. In particular, DAML is about. Sure, DAML work is being done in the framework of software agents on the web, but it's the same problem: having services that don't know about each other ahead of time figure out for themselves how to talk to each other. Furthermore, the technologies that have been developed as part of the work on the semantic web already seem considerably more sophisticated than the "Obje" framework.
Craig Vasters is a bit confused about the reasons why open source is succeeding. He seems to think that it's some vast political conspiracy to bring down capitalism. He seems to believe that there are huge numbers of people who, because of ideology, write open source software and just do without food, clothing, or housing while doing so. Nothing could be further from the truth: open source is succeeding because it is efficient and economically competitive. Real businesses find it cheaper to participate in, and contribute to, open source projects than to license their software. Real programmers develop it because someone pays them to.
What Vasters is advocating is much more like what communism used to amount to in the real world: Vasters wants to distort the market by appealing to people to accept higher than market prices for some ideological reason. Vasters wants central planning, courtesy of Microsoft. And the reason he is advocating this is simple: Vasters is part of the Microsoft Central Committee: he benefits personally from those market inefficiencies. He just can't accept the fact that he and his company are being made obsolete by newer and better ways of doing business. And, like other obsolete businesses, he is trying to portray his company and his way of doing business as some kind of victim of a vast conspiracy.
As for Aiden, yes, he can't follow into the footsteps of Bill Gates. People generally don't get rich anymore founding software companies, and no amount of whining by Vasters is going to change that. What Aiden can do is make a good living doing custom software development. Whether he open sources that custom software or not doesn't even matter much--by definition, custom software is tailored to the needs of one client. You see, even in open source nirvana, there are plenty of people who will pay you for doing software development. Free software doesn't mean that nobody pays for software, it just means that people don't pay for software twice.
Yes, switching IS always a hassle, but there should be tools like those available for OS X (yes, I know, user, not enterprise level), but you get the idea.
Yes, there should be. And who better to write them than the city of Munich. Because that's how these kinds of tools get written: by users in response to their own need.
Linux needs to offer more than just lower costs to successfully compete
It does; it's more robust, it's more efficient, it's easier to customize and adapt, it runs on lower end hardware, it gives you more choices of user interfaces, it has 20 years of standardization behind it, more manageable, and on and on.
Not least because similar problems are likely to arise in other organizations switching to Linux.
Switching big organizations from anything to anything else is always a hassle, always costly, and always difficult. Yes, even if the target is something like Linux.
So....you can't write an Open Source version of a TCP/IP stack then?
Nobody has any legal power to force you to make your software actually compliant with the standard. In fact, almost all TCP/IP implementations contain serious, known violations of the standard.
In contrast, Sun has copyrights, licenses, and patents to force you to make your Java implementation compliant with their specifications. And they aren't kidding about it either: they have sued Microsoft over it, and they can just as easily sue open source projects.
There are plenty of on-line FAX services. They generally forward FAXes they receive to an E-mail address (as a multipage TIFF file), and they let you send FAXes through their web site, usually in text, PDF, TIFF, and MS Word format.
What's even worse is when Linux users seem to wonder why Linux on the desktop don't take over windows [...] but if they really wanted to get rid of MS they would listen to stuff like this.
What makes you think Linux users are "wondering" about that? What makes you think they "want to get rid of MS"?
My problem with Microsoft is not that 90% of the computer users use it and waste their money on it, my problem is that those 90% are trying to force the remaining 10% to use it, too.
I don't want to "get rid" of MS. I think that would be horrible because, as you observe, that would mean making Linux more like Windows. If I wanted to use Windows, I would be using it already. Go be happy with Windows and stop telling Linux users what they need to listen to.
When this guy tries to explain what needs to be improved to get to that goal, people say well design your own interface or don't use Linux then.
No, people say that he should use a Linux distribution that works. There are plenty of them around.
Seriously, if you can't get a windows PC to play a DVD, I wonder how you manage to get out of bed in a morning without killing yourself with your slippers.
Easy: unlike Windows, my slippers didn't ship with buggy drivers, buggy codecs, and buggy libraries.
What do you suggest is better for video production and watching? It certainly isn't Linux, that's for sure, and it certainly isn't a mac.
For watching, a DVD player or a PVR (many of them now run embedded Linux). For authoring, probably a high-end Mac. For video databases and on-demand video, Linux or UNIX-based systems.
As Sun has already stated (in response to criticisms) that they have no problem with someone working up an Open Source version, as long as the spec is adhered to.
That's a contradiction in terms. Open source doesn't make sense if someone can place significant restrictions on how the source is modified. You can't have "an open source version" that is required to adhere to a spec.
The Java language specification is already avaliable in the open, just like the JVM spec. This means that anybody could write a complete java implementation, open source.
No, they couldn't. Sun's Java specifications (including for the VM) come with licenses attached (I believe they are also reproduced in the books) that impose compatibility requirements; those compatibility requirements are incompatible with open source licenses.
Furthermore, Sun holds several patents related to the VM and the platform, so even if the specifications came with no strings attached, you could still not implement Java freely. And Sun will license those patents to you for free only if you actually comply with their compatibility requirements, which are, again, incompatible with open source licenses.
The open source version could not evolve faster than the Sun spec(because it would not be a real JVM then)
If the "open source" version is in any way required to be compatible with Sun's spec, it's not open source. The ability to make incompatible changes is an integral part of open source licenses.
In other words, there will be an open source java implementation, but you can bet your bottom dollar there will be better tools and IDEs for the closed version initially.
Since the better tools and IDEs are already open source, that prediction is guaranteed not to come true.
Sun's unsuccessful monkeying around with IDEs and tools for Java is itself a strong indication that Sun is just not up to it.
That's insane. Have you ever used Windows before? Judging by your rant, obviously not. I regularly use Windows machines for media playback (and authoring), and those problems are indicative of a bad user, not bad software. I never have media players "battling". I never have playback failing "for no apparent reason". And I regularly play DVD backups from anything, even my iPod, across the network.
Ah, yes, it's my fault that when I put a perfectly good DVD into the drive of a new brand-name laptop or Media Center PC, Windows Media Player crashes, or stutters, or quits. All I want it to do is to play the DVD correctly.
If you use Windows machines for authoring, of course, you aren't going to see that: you are going to have all the high-end codecs, fast machines, fast disks, fast processors, etc. installed to make it all work out.
Yes, I'm stupid when it comes to Windows Media. I just want the fscking piece of software to work correctly and it clearly doesn't. Even Windows XP Home Center has more than its share of trouble with simple video playback.
Windows XP has excellent media support, better than Linux, by far. Maybe you don't want to hear it, but it's true.
You're confusing quantity with quality, as people commonly do on Windows. I really don't give a damn how many gazillion codecs or video APIs Windows supports. I want a handful of standard formats to be supported well and I want the DVD drivers to work correctly every time. UNIX and Linux deliver that kind of functionality much better than Microsoft. Windows video is consumer grade stuff, and it's not even very good consumer grade stuff.
So let me get this straight, as a consumer, I'm looking to get an alternative to windows.
Why? Doesn't it work for you? Is it a political statement? Tired of paying the $200 to BillyG every other year?
I have to buy this alternative (even though I've been told it's free): Strike 1.
You don't "have" to. You pay more, you get less hassles. You download it for free, you can spend a few days figuring it out (some people find it fun).
But it is cheaper than windows: +1, but it won't work without configuration on my standard hardware set that window has no problem with: Strike 2.
There is no such thing as "standard hardware", and you can't have done a lot of Windows installations if you think that Windows works without problems on many PCs.
And if I don't want hassels, I have to buy Linux certified hardware: strike 3.
Why is that a "strike"? You buy a Macintosh to run MacOS, you buy a Windows PC to run Windows, why shouldn't you buy a Linux PC to run Linux?
ANd the hardware supported by linux is a much smaller subset than the windows hardware: strike 4.
So? Macintosh supports even less hardware. And what Windows "supports" is often junk anyway: yes, you can get a WinModem or a WinPrinter, and they cost less, but they also tend to be an endless source of hassles.
And the interfaces are still considereably lacking from the windows counterparts: Strike 5.
There, I strongly disagree. One of the main reasons why I use Linux is because I think the Windows GUI and Windows apps are truly awful. Funny, isn't it: we all have different needs and different preferences. Just because you think a Yugo is a really great car doesn't mean every car on the road needs to look like a Yugo.
Remind me again why a consumer wants to buy linux?
I have no idea why a consumer would want to buy Linux. I think consumers should buy whatever works best for them. That may well not be Linux. Linux is for those people for whom Linux works best. That includes me and apparently a few million other Linux users. And Linux adapts to the needs of its users because it is being created by its users.
If it doesn't include you, well, just don't use it. But don't try to tell people that they should turn Linux into Windows because you want a freebie OS. Linux is the way it is because the people who pay for it (with their time) make it so.
"macros" usually have to do with scripting GUI apps, yet another thing Linux mostly blows at, especially compared to AppleScript/OSA on Mac OS X but even Windows' WSH is better. There is KDE's and Qt's DCOP system, which is neat but very poorly supported.
OK, so you are a Mac geek and Linux doesn't work like you are used to. Fine. I have tried AppleScript/OSA and I happen to think that it sucks: it's a lousy language, it's tedious to use, and it doesn't work quite like I expect it either.
You know, that's why we have different platforms. If the Mac works the way you like it, use it and stop whining and complaining about Linux.
I don't think the poster would care if the particular macro package happened to be a perl module that added the ability to write automation macros for X apps, but if such a thing existed, it would be worth naming.
If the poster doesn't want to learn the Linux way of doing things, the poster should stick with Windows. It's that simple. Turning Linux into Windows isn't going to be good enough for him, and it's going to annoy the hell out of people like me who actually prefer the way Linux works right now.
Slashdot Mirror
...see if you can sort out the swing, awt, eclipse native widget fiasco.
.NET, something that fixes many of the problems with Java. Furthermore, .NET doesn't try to be cross-platform, so it avoids the costs and complexities resulting from cross-platform support.
.NET. Sun hasn't responded yet, since Java remains proprietary and cross-platform. Mono seems like the best response to date: it's open, open source, uses existing open source toolkits, and much of it is platform-specific--specific to open source platforms.
What's there to work out? First, Java's license doesn't allow integration into Mozilla; it's merely a proprietary add-on package. Second, what relevance does Java have to the browser anymore?
Furthermore, the "widget fiasco" is one of Sun's own making: it is Sun that insists on forcing Swing down everybody's throat. Mozilla would naturally use XUL/Java integration for its GUI.
J2EE seems strong at the backend.
You're confusing flab and muscle.
With a strong frontend, maybe MS has to react for a change.
MS has reacted, and they have reacted well: they brought out
The question is whether open source will respond to
Perhaps, but after looking at the 700+ page spec, which, by the way, has dependencies on almost every spec ever issued by the W3C... I kind of doubt it.
A 700 page spec that reuses W3C specs still beats Flash, a complex binary format that nobody supports.
To be a bit more specific, SVG encompasses so much that a fully compliant implementation must support not only the massive spec, but also ECMA Script, SMIL, MathML, etc.
Yes, and the same functionality is present in Flash (when it isn't, as in MathML, it's a deficiency). Now, when you try to do your own implementation of Flash, you have to start from scratch, trying to implement Macromedia's counterpart to ECMA Script, SMIL, etc. How is that better? At least with an SVG implementation, you can reuse existing ECMA Script, SMIL, MathML, XML, etc. tools and implementations.
Furthermore, there are several levels of SVG. I suspect most implementations will rely on the simplest level, which is a straightforward, modern vector graphics format based on XML, something that the world really does need. And it is a need that Flash does not fulfill.
Jeez, some moderator apparently has too many moderation points. I suppose such idiotic moderation is par for the course for Slashdot.
Its a very good theory - we have got bits of Mars on Earth, and its highly unlikely that bits of Earth haven't gone the other way.
Of course, bits of earth have gone the other way. But whether bacteria have survived the trip and whether they have survived on Mars is another question. Perhaps they did initially survive, then die, then something else sprung up. We won't know until we look, and we can't look anymore once it's been contaminated.
Bacteria can easily get across interplanetary space
You're jumping to conclusions--there is no evidence of that yet. It's plausible, but that's all. Until we actually observe it, we don't know. And there are a lot of things that "getting across interplanetary space" could mean.
but algae and fungi are a lot less likely to do so
Again, we don't know. Eucaryotic spores can be very hardy, too.
Which is exactly why we should send a manned mission with a microbiologist or two who can spend a year and a half looking at various types of sediment for hundreds of kilometers.
For that amount of money and effort, we can send literally hundreds of unmanned probes. The overall risk with the unmanned probes is going to be much lower and the overall scientific benefit is much greater.
Manned travel to Mars just makes no financial or scientific sense at this point.
NASA has never lost a human in space, so sending them on a 1.5 year mission is actually safer than throwing them to orbit.
Why would "losing a human in space" be a big concern in deciding whether to send a manned mission to Mars? That wasn't a concern during any of the other great explorations of humankind. But the sad fact is that safety just isn't what makes manned interplanetary missions disproportionately expensive, it's the weight and basic requirements of human beings in general that do.
Russia continued to burn up RTGs even after we'd stopped. One satellite actually burned up over Canada. No deaths were ever linked to the incident, but Canada made a big stink over it and had Russia pay for reparations.
Yeah, and no specific cancer deaths have ever been linked to smoking either. The only "link" that exists is that we have had two similar populations, those who smoked and those who didn't, and have been able to compare their rates of lung cancer. Unfortunately, we can't make that comparison for Pu release in the atmosphere: you either release Pu over Canada or you don't and nobody can prove anything definitive about the number of deaths resulting from that.
You'll have to forgive me, but they *really* piss me off. Even a *little* bit of research would show them that the risk is practically nill. In fact, there's much more risk from all the other chemicals on the rocket than from the RTG.
Sure, the risk from a single RTG is probably low. But once we accept that, where does it end? How many RTGs do we send up? How much fissionable material do we allow in orbit? You are terminally naive if you think that the issue is as simple as "putting an RTG on a Mars rover is low-risk". There are lots of legal, medical, and political questions and people like you aren't answering them. In fact, your kind just seems too clueless to realize that those questions even exist.
The notion that Mars has been contaminated via meteor impacts is still a theory. It's a plausible theory, but just a theory. It's, in fact, a theory we could try to confirm by examining what kind of life, if any, exists on Mars. That in itself would be a spectacular scientific result.
But once Mars has been contaminated by bacteria from earth, that opportunity is gone because we won't be able to distinguish bacteria we brought from bacteria that traveled via meteor impact.
Sure you did; that's what the term "using the idea [...] from Jini" means, and you yourself indicate later that you don't seem to know of any previous systems:
So, seriously, what other past implementations of this have there been? I am really curious.
Lots of Lisp and Scheme systems, plus many other systems based on scripting languages like Tcl. Many database systems have used mobile code extensively, including sandboxing (clients would send Pascal or Basic code to the database server to speed up queries). It used to be part of distributed programming, then it became software agents. Several of them, of course, offered sandboxing, because one obviously needs that for that kind of system.
As for your cracks about the real problem being a Java-based implementation, I will take it you are one of those "if it ain't GPL it ain't free" zealots.
As before, you are wrong and jumping to conclusions. No, in this case, I'm not referring to the fact that Java is proprietary software, I'm pointing out that it sucks technically at these kinds of applications: it has a bloated runtime, a poorly conceived system for sandboxing, and an unnecessarily complex reflection system.
And if Jini and Obje address different problems, perhaps you can enlighten me just what problems they each address that is so different, 'cuz it looks pretty identical to this Jini programer.
Jini fails to address the problem of ontological mappings between service descriptions, Obje tries to (but ignores at least a decade of prior work).
Do you seriously believe that Sun invented mobile code with Jini or Java? In reality, none of that stuff is new. Just about every idea in Jini was taken from other systems, and the combination also doesn't really offer much that is new. In any case, PARC's Obje addresses a different problem. But the problem it addresses has also been addressed before. If at least the new implementations were simpler and more open than their predecessors, but, being Java based, both Jini and Obje are actually worse.
Not surprisingly, people have been working on this for many years. In particular, DAML is about. Sure, DAML work is being done in the framework of software agents on the web, but it's the same problem: having services that don't know about each other ahead of time figure out for themselves how to talk to each other. Furthermore, the technologies that have been developed as part of the work on the semantic web already seem considerably more sophisticated than the "Obje" framework.
Sure, but we spell that kind of pasta "fusilli", not "fossil".
Craig Vasters is a bit confused about the reasons why open source is succeeding. He seems to think that it's some vast political conspiracy to bring down capitalism. He seems to believe that there are huge numbers of people who, because of ideology, write open source software and just do without food, clothing, or housing while doing so. Nothing could be further from the truth: open source is succeeding because it is efficient and economically competitive. Real businesses find it cheaper to participate in, and contribute to, open source projects than to license their software. Real programmers develop it because someone pays them to.
What Vasters is advocating is much more like what communism used to amount to in the real world: Vasters wants to distort the market by appealing to people to accept higher than market prices for some ideological reason. Vasters wants central planning, courtesy of Microsoft. And the reason he is advocating this is simple: Vasters is part of the Microsoft Central Committee: he benefits personally from those market inefficiencies. He just can't accept the fact that he and his company are being made obsolete by newer and better ways of doing business. And, like other obsolete businesses, he is trying to portray his company and his way of doing business as some kind of victim of a vast conspiracy.
As for Aiden, yes, he can't follow into the footsteps of Bill Gates. People generally don't get rich anymore founding software
companies, and no amount of whining by Vasters is going to change that. What Aiden can do is make a good living doing custom software development. Whether he open sources that custom software or not doesn't even matter much--by definition, custom software is tailored to the needs of one client. You see, even in open source nirvana, there are plenty of people who will pay you for doing software development. Free software doesn't mean that nobody pays for software, it just means that people don't pay for software twice.
Yes, switching IS always a hassle, but there should be tools like those available for OS X (yes, I know, user, not enterprise level), but you get the idea.
Yes, there should be. And who better to write them than the city of Munich. Because that's how these kinds of tools get written: by users in response to their own need.
Linux needs to offer more than just lower costs to successfully compete
It does; it's more robust, it's more efficient, it's easier to customize and adapt, it runs on lower end hardware, it gives you more choices of user interfaces, it has 20 years of standardization behind it, more manageable, and on and on.
Not least because similar problems are likely to arise in other organizations switching to Linux.
Switching big organizations from anything to anything else is always a hassle, always costly, and always difficult. Yes, even if the target is something like Linux.
So....you can't write an Open Source version of a TCP/IP stack then?
Nobody has any legal power to force you to make your software actually compliant with the standard. In fact, almost all TCP/IP implementations contain serious, known violations of the standard.
In contrast, Sun has copyrights, licenses, and patents to force you to make your Java implementation compliant with their specifications. And they aren't kidding about it either: they have sued Microsoft over it, and they can just as easily sue open source projects.
There are plenty of on-line FAX services. They generally forward FAXes they receive to an E-mail address (as a multipage TIFF file), and they let you send FAXes through their web site, usually in text, PDF, TIFF, and MS Word format.
What's even worse is when Linux users seem to wonder why Linux on the desktop don't take over windows [...] but if they really wanted to get rid of MS they would listen to stuff like this.
What makes you think Linux users are "wondering" about that? What makes you think they "want to get rid of MS"?
My problem with Microsoft is not that 90% of the computer users use it and waste their money on it, my problem is that those 90% are trying to force the remaining 10% to use it, too.
I don't want to "get rid" of MS. I think that would be horrible because, as you observe, that would mean making Linux more like Windows. If I wanted to use Windows, I would be using it already. Go be happy with Windows and stop telling Linux users what they need to listen to.
When this guy tries to explain what needs to be improved to get to that goal, people say well design your own interface or don't use Linux then.
No, people say that he should use a Linux distribution that works. There are plenty of them around.
Seriously, if you can't get a windows PC to play a DVD, I wonder how you manage to get out of bed in a morning without killing yourself with your slippers.
Easy: unlike Windows, my slippers didn't ship with buggy drivers, buggy codecs, and buggy libraries.
What do you suggest is better for video production and watching? It certainly isn't Linux, that's for sure, and it certainly isn't a mac.
For watching, a DVD player or a PVR (many of them now run embedded Linux). For authoring, probably a high-end Mac. For video databases and on-demand video, Linux or UNIX-based systems.
As Sun has already stated (in response to criticisms) that they have no problem with someone working up an Open Source version, as long as the spec is adhered to.
That's a contradiction in terms. Open source doesn't make sense if someone can place significant restrictions on how the source is modified. You can't have "an open source version" that is required to adhere to a spec.
The Java language specification is already avaliable in the open, just like the JVM spec. This means that anybody could write a complete java implementation, open source.
No, they couldn't. Sun's Java specifications (including for the VM) come with licenses attached (I believe they are also reproduced in the books) that impose compatibility requirements; those compatibility requirements are incompatible with open source licenses.
Furthermore, Sun holds several patents related to the VM and the platform, so even if the specifications came with no strings attached, you could still not implement Java freely. And Sun will license those patents to you for free only if you actually comply with their compatibility requirements, which are, again, incompatible with open source licenses.
The open source version could not evolve faster than the Sun spec(because it would not be a real JVM then)
If the "open source" version is in any way required to be compatible with Sun's spec, it's not open source. The ability to make incompatible changes is an integral part of open source licenses.
An OSS version that comes with no support and little in the way of guarantees. A commercially licensed version that does.
Oh, goodie, I'd want to run Sun's commercially supported Java about as much as I want to run Solaris or Sun's C compiler.
In other words, there will be an open source java implementation, but you can bet your bottom dollar there will be better tools and IDEs for the closed version initially.
Since the better tools and IDEs are already open source, that prediction is guaranteed not to come true.
Sun's unsuccessful monkeying around with IDEs and tools for Java is itself a strong indication that Sun is just not up to it.
That's insane. Have you ever used Windows before? Judging by your rant, obviously not. I regularly use Windows machines for media playback (and authoring), and those problems are indicative of a bad user, not bad software. I never have media players "battling". I never have playback failing "for no apparent reason". And I regularly play DVD backups from anything, even my iPod, across the network.
Ah, yes, it's my fault that when I put a perfectly good DVD into the drive of a new brand-name laptop or Media Center PC, Windows Media Player crashes, or stutters, or quits. All I want it to do is to play the DVD correctly.
If you use Windows machines for authoring, of course, you aren't going to see that: you are going to have all the high-end codecs, fast machines, fast disks, fast processors, etc. installed to make it all work out.
Yes, I'm stupid when it comes to Windows Media. I just want the fscking piece of software to work correctly and it clearly doesn't. Even Windows XP Home Center has more than its share of trouble with simple video playback.
Windows XP has excellent media support, better than Linux, by far. Maybe you don't want to hear it, but it's true.
You're confusing quantity with quality, as people commonly do on Windows. I really don't give a damn how many gazillion codecs or video APIs Windows supports. I want a handful of standard formats to be supported well and I want the DVD drivers to work correctly every time. UNIX and Linux deliver that kind of functionality much better than Microsoft. Windows video is consumer grade stuff, and it's not even very good consumer grade stuff.
So let me get this straight, as a consumer, I'm looking to get an alternative to windows.
Why? Doesn't it work for you? Is it a political statement? Tired of paying the $200 to BillyG every other year?
I have to buy this alternative (even though I've been told it's free): Strike 1.
You don't "have" to. You pay more, you get less hassles. You download it for free, you can spend a few days figuring it out (some people find it fun).
But it is cheaper than windows: +1, but it won't work without configuration on my standard hardware set that window has no problem with: Strike 2.
There is no such thing as "standard hardware", and you can't have done a lot of Windows installations if you think that Windows works without problems on many PCs.
And if I don't want hassels, I have to buy Linux certified hardware: strike 3.
Why is that a "strike"? You buy a Macintosh to run MacOS, you buy a Windows PC to run Windows, why shouldn't you buy a Linux PC to run Linux?
ANd the hardware supported by linux is a much smaller subset than the windows hardware: strike 4.
So? Macintosh supports even less hardware. And what Windows "supports" is often junk anyway: yes, you can get a WinModem or a WinPrinter, and they cost less, but they also tend to be an endless source of hassles.
And the interfaces are still considereably lacking from the windows counterparts: Strike 5.
There, I strongly disagree. One of the main reasons why I use Linux is because I think the Windows GUI and Windows apps are truly awful. Funny, isn't it: we all have different needs and different preferences. Just because you think a Yugo is a really great car doesn't mean every car on the road needs to look like a Yugo.
Remind me again why a consumer wants to buy linux?
I have no idea why a consumer would want to buy Linux. I think consumers should buy whatever works best for them. That may well not be Linux. Linux is for those people for whom Linux works best. That includes me and apparently a few million other Linux users. And Linux adapts to the needs of its users because it is being created by its users.
If it doesn't include you, well, just don't use it. But don't try to tell people that they should turn Linux into Windows because you want a freebie OS. Linux is the way it is because the people who pay for it (with their time) make it so.
"macros" usually have to do with scripting GUI apps, yet another thing Linux mostly blows at, especially compared to AppleScript/OSA on Mac OS X but even Windows' WSH is better. There is KDE's and Qt's DCOP system, which is neat but very poorly supported.
OK, so you are a Mac geek and Linux doesn't work like you are used to. Fine. I have tried AppleScript/OSA and I happen to think that it sucks: it's a lousy language, it's tedious to use, and it doesn't work quite like I expect it either.
You know, that's why we have different platforms. If the Mac works the way you like it, use it and stop whining and complaining about Linux.
I don't think the poster would care if the particular macro package happened to be a perl module that added the ability to write automation macros for X apps, but if such a thing existed, it would be worth naming.
If the poster doesn't want to learn the Linux way of doing things, the poster should stick with Windows. It's that simple. Turning Linux into Windows isn't going to be good enough for him, and it's going to annoy the hell out of people like me who actually prefer the way Linux works right now.