Oh my god. He's never seen a picture of England... What's next? "England? Wassat?" Oh, and that's a picture of London, they weren't parked, cars just don't move there!!!
It's gonna have to happen eventually. The present situation of competition between the various GUIs is great and necessary until one of them is truly usable (fast, stable, lotsa apps & importantly -- supportable by IT depts). However, while the underlying technologies will continue to be disparate, the GUI must gain at least a baseline standard look & feel.
The reason is simple. Companies and organisations have limited training budgets and trying to support/train for, multiple GUIs for jane/joe staffer is simply not feasable or sustainable as a model.
Long term this is a non-issue as voice command and other hopefully more natural methods of Human/Computer interaction develop. For now though, if Linux wants to make it onto the corp. DT bigtime, it'll need a common look and feel.
That said, I don't think that this is somthing to be decided upon by committee -- rather it should (& will) happen organically, a "decision" will be made, but by the "invisible hand" of competition.
Let's assume this is the case. How do you motivate programmers to create a program under those conditions "hey people, we're gonna make an office suite for Linux, don't worry about making it great - we're only writing a spoiler".
I think it's reasonable to assume that MS would only create an Office Suite for Linux to make money - the same motivation they have elsewhere (Macintosh anyone - MS make more SW for that platform than anyone else).
If you read the article you'll notice that MS are talking about:
"[H]e confirmed that Media Player for the Mac would have digital rights management (DRM) software built-in. Within the next six to nine months, Microsoft plans to roll out a version of DRM that will enable consumers to manipulate and back up their own licence stores of video and music clips... [T]he software giant has yet to decide whether users will do this themselves or whether it will be kept on a secure site."
The media companies need this sort of functionality to go on existing - as the DVD debacle has shown, no amount of security features will have long term viability. What will therefore be required is a method by which consumers can demonstrate ownership of a license to posess music. MS wants to control the means by which this license is stored and validated.
This might not be the eventual standard but MS being MS, they'll want to get their foot in the door early. To control the standard they'll need to have their SW on as many platforms as possible - otherwise there would be Linux specific licensing authorities.
I think there was a good C4 (UK TV Channel) documentary about the history of execution - wasn't the film shown on that? I've been digging around but can't find anything about it in the web (lot's of stuff about how hard done by Tesla was though).
The battle between the AC and DC systems is instructive when viewing the battles between various OS today.
Eddison was adamant that the AC system was far too dangerous to use in a distribution system. He attempted to demonstrate this by publicly electrocuting and elephant in (I believe) New York using AC current (an act that eventually led to the invention of the electric chair). The fact that DC poses no less a danger apparently slipped past him.
This is an early (and desperately innefective) example of FUD.
If someone wants to fill in the gaps here, I'd be grateful.
BT's doing something cutting edge and interesting? I have my doubts but will check it out later. (looked at Cellnet's website today but didn't notice anything). IF this is true, then it is happening because there is real and murderous competition in the UK cellular market. Prices are really competetive and investment levels really high. 4 companies compete in that market and BT's Cellnet is by no means the largest (2nd and worst rep.) This is in stark contrast to the wired market where BT's monopoly in the local loop means that we can forget about ADSL for the near future (if ever!!) and ISDN is exhorbitantly expensive. Well, either way, I hope it is true though given the state of Cellnet's present network (bloody awful) I have doubts. Bye
Slashdot Mirror
Oh my god. He's never seen a picture of England...
What's next? "England? Wassat?"
Oh, and that's a picture of London, they weren't parked, cars just don't move there!!!
It's gonna have to happen eventually. The present situation of competition between the various GUIs is great and necessary until one of them is truly usable (fast, stable, lotsa apps & importantly -- supportable by IT depts). However, while the underlying technologies will continue to be disparate, the GUI must gain at least a baseline standard look & feel.
The reason is simple. Companies and organisations have limited training budgets and trying to support/train for, multiple GUIs for jane/joe staffer is simply not feasable or sustainable as a model.
Long term this is a non-issue as voice command and other hopefully more natural methods of Human/Computer interaction develop. For now though, if Linux wants to make it onto the corp. DT bigtime, it'll need a common look and feel.
That said, I don't think that this is somthing to be decided upon by committee -- rather it should (& will) happen organically, a "decision" will be made, but by the "invisible hand" of competition.
Slap me 'cos I'm wrong....
Let's assume this is the case. How do you motivate programmers to create a program under those conditions "hey people, we're gonna make an office suite for Linux, don't worry about making it great - we're only writing a spoiler".
I think it's reasonable to assume that MS would only create an Office Suite for Linux to make money - the same motivation they have elsewhere (Macintosh anyone - MS make more SW for that platform than anyone else).
"[H]e confirmed that Media Player for the Mac would have digital rights management (DRM) software built-in.
Within the next six to nine months, Microsoft plans to roll out a version of DRM that will enable consumers to manipulate and back up their own licence stores of video and music clips... [T]he software giant has yet to decide whether users will do this themselves or whether it will be kept on a secure site."
The media companies need this sort of functionality to go on existing - as the DVD debacle has shown, no amount of security features will have long term viability. What will therefore be required is a method by which consumers can demonstrate ownership of a license to posess music. MS wants to control the means by which this license is stored and validated.
This might not be the eventual standard but MS being MS, they'll want to get their foot in the door early. To control the standard they'll need to have their SW on as many platforms as possible - otherwise there would be Linux specific licensing authorities.
---No Judgement Just an Assesment---
----------Probably Wrong------------
I think there was a good C4 (UK TV Channel) documentary about the history of execution - wasn't the film shown on that? I've been digging around but can't find anything about it in the web (lot's of stuff about how hard done by Tesla was though).
The battle between the AC and DC systems is instructive when viewing the battles between various OS today.
Eddison was adamant that the AC system was far too dangerous to use in a distribution system. He attempted to demonstrate this by publicly electrocuting and elephant in (I believe) New York using AC current (an act that eventually led to the invention of the electric chair). The fact that DC poses no less a danger apparently slipped past him.
This is an early (and desperately innefective) example of FUD.
If someone wants to fill in the gaps here, I'd be grateful.
BT's doing something cutting edge and interesting? I have my doubts but will check it out later. (looked at Cellnet's website today but didn't notice anything). IF this is true, then it is happening because there is real and murderous competition in the UK cellular market. Prices are really competetive and investment levels really high. 4 companies compete in that market and BT's Cellnet is by no means the largest (2nd and worst rep.) This is in stark contrast to the wired market where BT's monopoly in the local loop means that we can forget about ADSL for the near future (if ever!!) and ISDN is exhorbitantly expensive. Well, either way, I hope it is true though given the state of Cellnet's present network (bloody awful) I have doubts. Bye