OK, that's not good mail targetting. Even worse, during election times in the US, I tend to get unsolicited mail about various candidates and voter initiatives from the US, which is _really_ pointless for them, seeing how Swedes - living in Sweden, with a '.se' ending in the mail address - normally aren't eligible to vote in california or wherever they are campaigning...
Makes me want to move temporarily so I can vote for their opponent.:)
Because it is such an important use, not only for civilian enterprises, but also for military uses, it is sort of unwise to have no control over the system used. The deifintion of 'risk' is roughly 'chance of happening' times 'consequenses if it does', and even though the chance of the US pulling the plug for europeans - or some third party managing to figure out how to cripple the system - is very small, the consequences could be devastating enough that a second, different system could be warrranted. Add to that that Europe and the US might well have different ideas of whom to cut off in conflict in the future, and it seems like a pretty good idea to have a system of our own.
YEs, many KDE and Gnome apps _are_ slow on old hardware. All software is written for a target architecture, and plainly, these desktops (and especially their apps) are aiming for beefier stuff than you have. That said, I occasionally run Gnome on my p133/32Mb laptop and it's acceptable as long as I don't try to run a modern browser and a number of other memory-intensive stuff at the same time.
What I _do_ run instead is XFce. It's quite fast even on that humble machine - and I can still use gnome apps on it as usual. Others speak warmly about Blackbox or WindowMaker. Remember, just because you're not using the desktop itself, it doesn't mean you can't use all the apps and other stuff.
There's a Gnome2 snapshot channel there (it's down this weekend, though). I wouldn't expect the second beta to show up until monday at the earliest.
It is a pretty convenient way to test it out; all the Gnome1 programs will of course still work as usual. It _is_ a Beta, of course, so don't expect a pillar of stability:)
Re:Excellent! But...
on
GTK+ 2.0
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I've found that a lot of the slowness of gtk+2 that I saw was due to the use of AA. Turns out xft isn't the snappiest piece of code around when it's antialiasing. Turn off AA, and things are a lot smoother again.
This is in no way unique to KDE; large development projects sometimes stumble even with the best of intentions by those involved. The Open Source community is unique in that everyones dirty laundry gets aired in public. This can make the process seem unruly, haphazard and chaotic compared to closed development - the truth is that the same kind of conflicts, friction and occasional disasters occur there as well, but hidden from view.
I'm not a KDE user myself (I prefer gnome), but I'm confident and hopeful that the KDE development team will get past these problems and produce another good release. They've done very good releases in the past, and there's no reason for them not to do it again.
But again, the vast majority of people aren't going to bother, if they already can do all they need with their content. Why do you suppose the selection on the bookwarez places is so small?
In this case, your Id information would already be embedded in the file when you receive it.
Yes, there would be cracks for this, no doubt. The point I was trying to make is that there will always be ways around it. But if the system is non-intrusive enough, most people will not bother with defeating the ID stuff, as they can use the content the way they like anyway. The vast majority of people do want to be honest and pay their way if they are given the chance and feel they get their money's worth (which, in the case of CD:s, they really aren't today).
What you want to stop is the casual copying of content. As you say, Windows was and is fairly easily crackable, but MS still does very well, as most people finds it too much of a hassle. If/when they go for a subscription model, and crack down even more on the use of a single copy for multiple machines, this picture will of course change...
Not quite true. Even if they cost a lot more than ordinary batteries, there are a lot of applications where the benefits of extended life is just so great it's worth it. Just consider all the laptop-toting executive types out there in the world; they're likely to pay through the nose if it means the difference between being able to work during the whole flight or not.
What I'm trying to say is that there isn't a linear correlation between battery life and price.
One way to handle this better would be to not restrict copying at all; instead, embed the identity of the original buyer into the content. Note that that does _not_ require the company or anybody else to register who bought the book, movie or whatever, just that the buyer can be identified from the content itself.
As long as you only do whatever you are allowed to do with your content anyway (quote it, show excerpts, give copies to friends), nobody will care - and are not _able_ to care. If it finds its way out on file-sharing places, it can be picked up, and the original buyer can be contacted.
Now the original buyer might well not be the one streading the content, but he or she could give information about who else had access to it, and thus the content holders could track down whoever did the deed. Even if there is no legal way to force the buyer to reveal anything (and I don't think there is), the possibility of being implicated in a mess like this is enough for the majority of people to stay away from spreading stuff beyond what they're allowed to.
And that's exactly what this _should be about (and what the car analogy is about as well): people determined to break the law by selling counterfeit copies (or that have an overriding political urge to spread others' content far and wide) will find ways to do so, just like no 'real' car thief is stopped by locks and alarms (even alarms only work because not every car has them; it's easier to steal a car without it).
What you want to stop is incidental spreading, by people that should know better. By having onerous protection systems that force people to break them just to use the content in ways they have a right to do - and expect to be able to - the barrier is gone to then just spread it as far and wide as they want. By locking down too tight, the providers actually increase the amount of copyright violations. It's like warning lights for seatbelts. Some people got so tired of hearing that buzzer whenever they put their briefcase on the passenger seat, they clicked the seatbelt permanently in place - and prevented it from being used when there _was _ a passenger in the car.
Now, right off, I'm probably among those 3% of high-volume users; I paid the same day it was announced, I only disable ads on the frontpage, and I've used up 149 of my pageviews already. For me, this is looking like around $5 a month if I keep it up.
And that's the problem. As I know I'm using up my ad-free page views - even though I paid only to support/. - I find myself surfing less and less to slashdot. No longer do I reload the page just to see if anything new is up; instead, I rely more and more on the rdf feed I have on Evolution. I've also started clicking straight to the stories, rather than go via the frontpage, thereby missing any other stuff happening in my rdf boxes on slashdot.
I have a sort of set click routine when I'm bored, where I go through a set number of sites (/., LinuxToday, New York Times, Dn, and so on), lookig for anything interesting to read (this is sort of the same behavior as zapping through the channels on a tv). I've stopped including/. on the list.
Now, I know it's only $5, and I didn't even really pay to remove the ads, but just for supporting a favourite site. It doesn't matter. Psychologically this has set up a resistance to wantonly going to slashdot unless I have a good reason to be there.
The problem is that I'm paying for a set number of pageviews. I estimate (as above) that for my normal surfing habits, it'd cost me about $5 a month to keep this up. I would, however, _much_ rather pay for a set time than for a number of impressions.
I want my/. back, so I'm going to burn through those pageviews I have, and then not pay for another set. If I can get the option to pay per month or something similar - and especially if they eventually implement some interesting perk for paying - then I'm in again. Until then, I just find this scheme cramps my surfing habits too much. Ridiculous, I know.
It depends on what your work is, of course, but I would simply make sure that I can get work done even with a net outage. Mirror essential documents or code pieces locally, and you can get something done anyway. There is always documentation to write, proposals to tinker with or reading to catch up on. And if you need to talk to a colleague, there's always still the telephone...
But if you have lost the use of your legs, you need to rebuild the car controls. In a car, it is expensive and difficult, as cars aren't made to be modified in this way. A computer UI can be much easier to customize for individual needs - if UI designers let it.
He states that "If one person makes a change, we all make that change" (paraphrased). What if a person with bad eyesight starts work there, and needs to use a very large font on screen to be able to read? Do they all choose a ridiculously large font, even though only one person needs it?
The solutions is _not_ to force everybody to the same UI design. The solution (a looong way in coming) is to have a mechanism for transparently migrate the users preferenses to whatever machine he or she is sitting at at the moment.
You don't pay for availability. You pay for not seeing ads when you don't want them. If the site is down, you won't see/., but your page count won't go down either.
Hopefully, a common theme distribution mechanism will eventually surface.
Meanwhile, I find that I use very few KDE apps on my desktop, but when I do, I'm not bothered by the different look compared to the rest of my apps. Far more important would be to get a consensus on keybindings...
I have a colleague that's a fairly heavy wordprocessor user. For a while she used Star Office 6.0 beta and liked it. After a minor disaster (crashing HD), we helped her get her machine reinstalled. Just to try it out, we installed Open Office instead. Turns out it's at least as good as the 'real' StarOffice, and she has been happy with it.
So, StarOffice for a branded package with support and feel-good factor for people unsure about this newfangled OPen Source thing; and Open Office for all the rest of us. Fair enough.
But this is not really too different from the normal open-source process. People just starting out is going to write poor code, reinvent the wheel and seeing their patches being rejected quite a lot. As their domain experience grows, so does their skill.
the difference here is of course that Sun has a stick and a carrot available by virtue of paying them, and are being able to determine what they will work on, and can demand a higher level of professionalism.
Mono is based on some pretty good ideas whether associated with.Net or not, and Linux really has more to gain from being able to write _really_ portable code (that's runnable on any architecture Linux supports) in any language (whether installed on the target machine or not). You could see a situation where.Net whithers, but Mono thrives.
Exactly what do you see as missing? We have a common window manager standard, we have a common standard for menus, with QT3 the clipboard should be interoperable, and there is quite a bit of talk about fixing some kind of standard for desktop themes - though that last one is difficult.
Is there anything else needed?
The projects will never settle on one toolkit, that's for certain; that cuts right to the heart of each projects goals and identity. They're unlikely to ever agree on a common component model either (although there's been attempts to bridge between them). None of that is really needed, however. If the applications can interoperate on the user-visible level, that really is the best of both worlds - the developers can choose whichever project they prefer to write the software in, and the users can run it fine either way.
Ummm, no. Gnome isn't, and will never be "based on mono". Mono may become just another way to develop gnome apps, along with C/C++, Perl, Python and so on.
Slashdot Mirror
OK, that's not good mail targetting. Even worse, during election times in the US, I tend to get unsolicited mail about various candidates and voter initiatives from the US, which is _really_ pointless for them, seeing how Swedes - living in Sweden, with a '.se' ending in the mail address - normally aren't eligible to vote in california or wherever they are campaigning...
:)
Makes me want to move temporarily so I can vote for their opponent.
/Janne
Because it is such an important use, not only for civilian enterprises, but also for military uses, it is sort of unwise to have no control over the system used. The deifintion of 'risk' is roughly 'chance of happening' times 'consequenses if it does', and even though the chance of the US pulling the plug for europeans - or some third party managing to figure out how to cripple the system - is very small, the consequences could be devastating enough that a second, different system could be warrranted. Add to that that Europe and the US might well have different ideas of whom to cut off in conflict in the future, and it seems like a pretty good idea to have a system of our own.
/Janne
YEs, many KDE and Gnome apps _are_ slow on old hardware. All software is written for a target architecture, and plainly, these desktops (and especially their apps) are aiming for beefier stuff than you have. That said, I occasionally run Gnome on my p133/32Mb laptop and it's acceptable as long as I don't try to run a modern browser and a number of other memory-intensive stuff at the same time.
What I _do_ run instead is XFce. It's quite fast even on that humble machine - and I can still use gnome apps on it as usual. Others speak warmly about Blackbox or WindowMaker. Remember, just because you're not using the desktop itself, it doesn't mean you can't use all the apps and other stuff.
/Janne
There's a Gnome2 snapshot channel there (it's down this weekend, though). I wouldn't expect the second beta to show up until monday at the earliest.
:)
It is a pretty convenient way to test it out; all the Gnome1 programs will of course still work as usual. It _is_ a Beta, of course, so don't expect a pillar of stability
Haha, did you ever realize the word play there?
:)
Yes, I certainly did, and had to restrain myself to avoid doing something incredibly cheesy with it.
/Janne
Just use gtkmm.
/Janne
I've found that a lot of the slowness of gtk+2 that I saw was due to the use of AA. Turns out xft isn't the snappiest piece of code around when it's antialiasing. Turn off AA, and things are a lot smoother again.
/Janne
This is in no way unique to KDE; large development projects sometimes stumble even with the best of intentions by those involved. The Open Source community is unique in that everyones dirty laundry gets aired in public. This can make the process seem unruly, haphazard and chaotic compared to closed development - the truth is that the same kind of conflicts, friction and occasional disasters occur there as well, but hidden from view.
I'm not a KDE user myself (I prefer gnome), but I'm confident and hopeful that the KDE development team will get past these problems and produce another good release. They've done very good releases in the past, and there's no reason for them not to do it again.
/Janne
But again, the vast majority of people aren't going to bother, if they already can do all they need with their content. Why do you suppose the selection on the bookwarez places is so small?
/Janne
In this case, your Id information would already be embedded in the file when you receive it.
Yes, there would be cracks for this, no doubt. The point I was trying to make is that there will always be ways around it. But if the system is non-intrusive enough, most people will not bother with defeating the ID stuff, as they can use the content the way they like anyway. The vast majority of people do want to be honest and pay their way if they are given the chance and feel they get their money's worth (which, in the case of CD:s, they really aren't today).
What you want to stop is the casual copying of content. As you say, Windows was and is fairly easily crackable, but MS still does very well, as most people finds it too much of a hassle. If/when they go for a subscription model, and crack down even more on the use of a single copy for multiple machines, this picture will of course change...
/Janne
Not quite true. Even if they cost a lot more than ordinary batteries, there are a lot of applications where the benefits of extended life is just so great it's worth it. Just consider all the laptop-toting executive types out there in the world; they're likely to pay through the nose if it means the difference between being able to work during the whole flight or not.
What I'm trying to say is that there isn't a linear correlation between battery life and price.
/Janne
One way to handle this better would be to not restrict copying at all; instead, embed the identity of the original buyer into the content. Note that that does _not_ require the company or anybody else to register who bought the book, movie or whatever, just that the buyer can be identified from the content itself.
As long as you only do whatever you are allowed to do with your content anyway (quote it, show excerpts, give copies to friends), nobody will care - and are not _able_ to care. If it finds its way out on file-sharing places, it can be picked up, and the original buyer can be contacted.
Now the original buyer might well not be the one streading the content, but he or she could give information about who else had access to it, and thus the content holders could track down whoever did the deed. Even if there is no legal way to force the buyer to reveal anything (and I don't think there is), the possibility of being implicated in a mess like this is enough for the majority of people to stay away from spreading stuff beyond what they're allowed to.
And that's exactly what this _should be about (and what the car analogy is about as well): people determined to break the law by selling counterfeit copies (or that have an overriding political urge to spread others' content far and wide) will find ways to do so, just like no 'real' car thief is stopped by locks and alarms (even alarms only work because not every car has them; it's easier to steal a car without it).
What you want to stop is incidental spreading, by people that should know better. By having onerous protection systems that force people to break them just to use the content in ways they have a right to do - and expect to be able to - the barrier is gone to then just spread it as far and wide as they want. By locking down too tight, the providers actually increase the amount of copyright violations. It's like warning lights for seatbelts. Some people got so tired of hearing that buzzer whenever they put their briefcase on the passenger seat, they clicked the seatbelt permanently in place - and prevented it from being used when there _was _ a passenger in the car.
/Janne
Now, right off, I'm probably among those 3% of high-volume users; I paid the same day it was announced, I only disable ads on the frontpage, and I've used up 149 of my pageviews already. For me, this is looking like around $5 a month if I keep it up.
/. - I find myself surfing less and less to slashdot. No longer do I reload the page just to see if anything new is up; instead, I rely more and more on the rdf feed I have on Evolution. I've also started clicking straight to the stories, rather than go via the frontpage, thereby missing any other stuff happening in my rdf boxes on slashdot.
/. on the list.
/. back, so I'm going to burn through those pageviews I have, and then not pay for another set. If I can get the option to pay per month or something similar - and especially if they eventually implement some interesting perk for paying - then I'm in again. Until then, I just find this scheme cramps my surfing habits too much. Ridiculous, I know.
And that's the problem. As I know I'm using up my ad-free page views - even though I paid only to support
I have a sort of set click routine when I'm bored, where I go through a set number of sites (/., LinuxToday, New York Times, Dn, and so on), lookig for anything interesting to read (this is sort of the same behavior as zapping through the channels on a tv). I've stopped including
Now, I know it's only $5, and I didn't even really pay to remove the ads, but just for supporting a favourite site. It doesn't matter. Psychologically this has set up a resistance to wantonly going to slashdot unless I have a good reason to be there.
The problem is that I'm paying for a set number of pageviews. I estimate (as above) that for my normal surfing habits, it'd cost me about $5 a month to keep this up. I would, however, _much_ rather pay for a set time than for a number of impressions.
I want my
/Janne
It depends on what your work is, of course, but I would simply make sure that I can get work done even with a net outage. Mirror essential documents or code pieces locally, and you can get something done anyway. There is always documentation to write, proposals to tinker with or reading to catch up on. And if you need to talk to a colleague, there's always still the telephone...
/Janne
But if you have lost the use of your legs, you need to rebuild the car controls. In a car, it is expensive and difficult, as cars aren't made to be modified in this way. A computer UI can be much easier to customize for individual needs - if UI designers let it.
He states that "If one person makes a change, we all make that change" (paraphrased). What if a person with bad eyesight starts work there, and needs to use a very large font on screen to be able to read? Do they all choose a ridiculously large font, even though only one person needs it?
The solutions is _not_ to force everybody to the same UI design. The solution (a looong way in coming) is to have a mechanism for transparently migrate the users preferenses to whatever machine he or she is sitting at at the moment.
/Janne
You don't pay for availability. You pay for not seeing ads when you don't want them. If the site is down, you won't see /., but your page count won't go down either.
/Janne
And yet, here in Sweden at least, region-free DVD players are outselling those that honour region coding. So much for honoring the spec.
/Janne
Hopefully, a common theme distribution mechanism will eventually surface.
Meanwhile, I find that I use very few KDE apps on my desktop, but when I do, I'm not bothered by the different look compared to the rest of my apps. Far more important would be to get a consensus on keybindings...
/Janne
I have a colleague that's a fairly heavy wordprocessor user. For a while she used Star Office 6.0 beta and liked it. After a minor disaster (crashing HD), we helped her get her machine reinstalled. Just to try it out, we installed Open Office instead. Turns out it's at least as good as the 'real' StarOffice, and she has been happy with it.
So, StarOffice for a branded package with support and feel-good factor for people unsure about this newfangled OPen Source thing; and Open Office for all the rest of us. Fair enough.
/Janne
But this is not really too different from the normal open-source process. People just starting out is going to write poor code, reinvent the wheel and seeing their patches being rejected quite a lot. As their domain experience grows, so does their skill.
the difference here is of course that Sun has a stick and a carrot available by virtue of paying them, and are being able to determine what they will work on, and can demand a higher level of professionalism.
/Janne
When I can figure out how to install the GNOME2 beta and not lose the use of my desktop... :)
/Janne
As I was saying before getting cut off:
.Net or not, and Linux really has more to gain from being able to write _really_ portable code (that's runnable on any architecture Linux supports) in any language (whether installed on the target machine or not). You could see a situation where .Net whithers, but Mono thrives.
Mono is based on some pretty good ideas whether associated with
/Janne
And also, the ideas behind .Net and Mono (as opposed to that passport #
Exactly what do you see as missing? We have a common window manager standard, we have a common standard for menus, with QT3 the clipboard should be interoperable, and there is quite a bit of talk about fixing some kind of standard for desktop themes - though that last one is difficult.
Is there anything else needed?
The projects will never settle on one toolkit, that's for certain; that cuts right to the heart of each projects goals and identity. They're unlikely to ever agree on a common component model either (although there's been attempts to bridge between them). None of that is really needed, however. If the applications can interoperate on the user-visible level, that really is the best of both worlds - the developers can choose whichever project they prefer to write the software in, and the users can run it fine either way.
/Janne
Ummm, no. Gnome isn't, and will never be "based on mono". Mono may become just another way to develop gnome apps, along with C/C++, Perl, Python and so on.
/Janne