Damn it, one of the things that always annoys me about Windows is that it's NOT as simple as copying a bunch of files. This is mostly due to their inane and out-dated drive lettering scheme.
In Linux (or any Unix), I can move my installed system to a different drive or partition just by copying it. I can install an entire system within a folder of another system. All I have to do is change my drive mounts, add some symlinks, or use chroot, and I can put the entire system anywhere and it's as if nothing changed.
When my Dad bought a new harddrive because his old one was dying, we tried in vain to copy his old system over to the new drive. First we tried imaging it using "dd" on a liveCD, but that didn't work. Then we tried making a new filesystem and using "cp" to just copy the whole thing. That didn't either. We didn't want to spend money on Norton Ghost, just for a one-time thing.. He ended up having to re-install and re-activate XP, re-install all his MS Office software he'd had some trouble with installing in the first place, and finally setting up a whole new system. Just because he wanted to replace his drive!
That, compared to the number of times I've moved my Linux system without a single hitch... I can't believe people put up with this crap. Now instead of keeping things simple, they're moving even FURTHER away from a file-based approach?
I vaguely remember programming MUI a bit.. it was good, if I remember correctly, though it's muddled with whether it was ACTUALLY good or just way better than programming Amiga GUIs without it.
I think I used it a bit in a language called Amiga E, which I really enjoyed as well. Hm, haven't thought to ever look up if it was ported to Linux..
any news on when it might be available in NA?
i've been wanting a handheld game machine and have been trying to decide which to get, and i keep stalling because i want something more useful than just for gaming... this almost decides it for me!
No. Well, generally you'll have faster code if you code it in assembly. But things change when you enter the world of embedded programming... you're right, portability isn't AS important as speed. Sometimes. In certain parts of your program. But I recommend you DON'T disregard portability, even when it comes to microprocessors. In a real-world engineering project, you never know when one day parts will change, parts become obsolete, and you don't want to be left having to translate thousands of lines of assembly code.
Rather, usually whats done is that most of the code is written in C, and only those parts that REALLY REALLY have to be optimized, like interrupt handlers for example, can be done in assembly. People use assembly for routines that, for example, have to take exactly a certain number of instruction cycles to complete.
But it should be avoided as much as possible. It's just not worth losing the portability.
More and more these days, microprocessors are embedding higher level concepts, and even entire operating systems, just to make software development easier.
I found I prefer simply being able to access my Linux partition from Windows by installing the (unfortunately not open-source) Ext3 driver.
Seems to work quite well. Yes, unfortunately it can't be Windows' root partition, but at least I can use Windows & Linux without needing an EXTRA data partition, or using Windows on FAT32. (Though I usually do just use FAT32 to keep things easy, because I'm not all that worried about security on my home box.)
Anyways one problem I ran into using a shared FAT32 partition is that I couldn't use files > 4GB. Haven't seriously tested it yet but I think using the Ext3 driver will fix that. (Mainly for virtual machine images for Qemu.)
"if even one citizen wants to send a document to a government in ODF form, they have to be able to deal with it."
I realize that OpenOffice has got an incredibly complex build system, and just sitting down and modifying is more than a simple task. However, it IS open-source, so I was wondering if anyone has considered this possibility:
What about a nice, self-contained version of OpenOffice, but with all of the GUI stuff stripped out, which instead of opening the editor, simply opens a little drag'n'drop dialog box. You select your desired "output format", and drop any document supported by OpenOffice into this window. This would include ODF files, Word docs, RTF, etc. It would then perform the equivalent of "Open" and "Save" in OpenOffice, in whatever format you specified.
Voila, instant converter! I would think this would be a baby-step towards having a nice universal document converter. It doesn't strike me as totally necessary to have it as an Add-in to Word, at least not immediately.
Yes, this would use OpenOffice's reverse-engineering MSdoc parser for converting to ODF, rather than using Word's native code, but I imagine it would be a good start anyways, and easier to do.
Anyways, I've tried to build OO before and quickly ran out of RAM and disk space, but maybe someone would be up to the task.
In general I wouldn't assume that you'd want to be browsing the web using Internet Explorer on your hosted Windows virtual machine. You'd be using Windows mainly for running particular applications you can't get on the Mac. I don't think spyware would be much of a problem under Parallels, simply because you wouln't be using it for day-to-day browsing, etc. Likely web devs would only use it for looking at their particular website, and companies might want to run an inhouse application they haven't ported yet, etc.
I do definitely think this is cool, but I think the next logical step... and I know this would be very tricky... would be to figure out how to run programs in the Parallels operating system in a sort of "rootless" windowed way. I guess this would be pretty much impossible without modifying the hosted operating system, but if it could be figured out, it would be fantastic. Imagine having Windows windows and Gnome windows running on top of OS X seemlessly, without seeing their respective desktop backgrounds.
I suppose you could do this with X by using SSH into the hosted *nix system and running OSX's X server, but I don't see how it could be done with Windows...
Well I was amazed to see no one had commented on their choice of LICENSE yet. It's interesting to see what MS would choose as a license in their foray into the OSS world. I would have been really surprised if they'd chosen GPL, because of obvious ethical conflicts, but I don't think I quite expected them to choose BSD.
This is significant, because it means developers are free to take the code and do what they want with it. For instance, how many people actually have Word 2007? With the BSD license someone could back-port it to previous versions...
It also implies that MS can't get away with "embrace and extend", because whatever they choose to do, someone will come along and create a custom version with the cruft removed. Consequently, I expect they just won't bother to put any in the first place. (Well, maybe that's wishful thinking.)
Additionally, if this plugin integrates badly with Word, making it difficult or non-obvious for people to use, or doesn't adequately convert certain features that it could probably handle better, someone is free to come along and improve it!
Even if the MS project doesn't accept people's suggestions and changes, the BSD license ensures that anyone is free to fork it and release their own version.
So: The fact that they chose the BSD license is a really important detail here.. very interesting move.
Man, people on cell phones can barely WALK, let alone DRIVE. I can't even count the number of times people talking on their phones have bumped into me, or stopped short right in front of me, or cut me off when I'm walking somewhere. Especially in a subway station. It's like they completely forget about what's going on around them. Argh! Pet pieve.
Didn't those issues get pushed aside because you got them?
Who, me? (turns around...)
I mean, what else is there to discuss about same-sex marriage once you've started marrying them? Are you going to start un-marrying people?
Some would like to, that's for sure.
And who really wants to stop cancer patients from smoking pot? It's better for them than any other painkiller they could take.
I would agree, but again, some wouldn't.
Is your post sarcastic and I missed it?
A little, but not entirely.
Because copyright issues and military spending are much more important than stopping same sex marriage or pot smokers, because copyright and military spending affect everyone, not just a small group of people that want to do what they want.
No, I just think the above issues make for WAY more entertaining news.:) But seriously, I think social issues are just as "important" as budget spending and the economy. It's part of what defines us as a nation. And if the above issues just affect "a small group of people that want to do what they want", it wouldn't have been such a big debate.. clearly the issues DID affect lots of people would weren't even gay, or even interesting in smoking pot, because they sure like to make a big stink about these things. (No pun intended.)
But anyways, no worries, I'm not that serious about it. I was just noticing how the news really has changed since Harper came into power. That's all. The budget is being redirected and we're only just beginning to understand how it is going to affect us in the next few years. I wasn't really trying to pass judgement, although I can see how my post probably came off that way. However news items like TFA really do kind of freak me out.. I can't help but feelt his wouldn't have happened under a different administration.
All in all I'm just kind of curious how things are going to go. There's starting to be more and more of a similarly between Canadian and American news these days...
Yeesh,... I know. What's happened? A couple of years ago we were all debating about same-sex marriage and medicinal marijuana. Now it seems these issues have been pushed aside in favor of copyright issues and how much money goes to the military. What the hell has changed?? What is happening this fine country?
Oh right...
Harper.
(Ps. I used to actually not mind the guy.. but now.. I dunno. Starting to get a bad impression..)
Interesting, I'm not really a web developer except for a bit of custom javascript DHTML stuff I've done. (Yes, most of my web experience comes from the days when it was just called DHTML..)
This is the first time I've peeked into a platform like this... it's really interesting how close it is to writing a GUI application, like in SWT or something. (Again, I've only done a little bit of SWT, since I don't prefer Java most of the time, but it definitely has its place.)
But I find it amazing how it seems totally incidental that it happens to use the web for rendering its interface. What it really makes me think of is the possibility of writing multiple back-ends for it. Imagine using it to write applications that can compile to both a GUI environment, using native Win32/GTK/Cocoa elements, and then also be able to easily re-compile to a web application. Not sure there'd be any point to that, come to think of it, but the idea sounds cool for some reason.;-)
Or imagine writing an application which is totally local, but happens to use a browser for its interface. It could embed a mini HTTP server in it.. well, I know this has been done before, but this is the first time I've seen an API that actually makes the idea somewhat attractive to me. It would solve the multiplatform GUI problem by just using whatever browser the user happens to prefer.
Anyways, now if only I could use GWT from Python instead of Java..;-) (Same goes for SWT by the way.. the PySWT project isn't very useful yet. Sigh..)
Well, not to mention that it's pretty difficult to write and debug drivers for hardware that you don't own. Even if you found someone who'd be willing to work on them, chances are they won't have examples of every different wireless card available for testing. However, one-by-one, I think yes, the lead-time could easily shrink. But chances are you'd have to find a new developer for each wireless chipset, unless you're willing to donate hardware.
(It would be cool if there was some kind of pool resource that people could donate hardware to for developers to use, though that sounds awfully complicated to organize.:)
When you browse Google Maps for example, there is a button called "Link to this page". It's needed because the URL in the address bar doesn't actually allow you to browse to the map you are viewing. This is because google has no way of dynamically specifying the "link" URL in your address bar without making your browser go to another page.
(Like when you change location.url -- it makes your browser actually go there, not just display different text in the address bar.)
Something like "Link to this page" could be implemented as a standard, so that when you're viewing an AJAX site, the "bookmark" button could be given a special URL that would actually go back to that page as intended, which the AJAX application would have to be programmed to support. The link that is actually bookmarked might differ from the one you used to get to what you are viewing, but is guaranteed to get you back there if you click it.
On the other hand, a system like that would also be very ripe for phishing exploits, so never mind.
Soooo true. I used to be way better at video games when I was 12. They're still fun though, but I have vague memories of actually getting past more than 2 levels of MegaMan...
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Damn it, one of the things that always annoys me about Windows is that it's NOT as simple as copying a bunch of files.
This is mostly due to their inane and out-dated drive lettering scheme.
In Linux (or any Unix), I can move my installed system to a different drive or partition just by copying it. I can install an entire system within a folder of another system. All I have to do is change my drive mounts, add some symlinks, or use chroot, and I can put the entire system anywhere and it's as if nothing changed.
When my Dad bought a new harddrive because his old one was dying, we tried in vain to copy his old system over to the new drive. First we tried imaging it using "dd" on a liveCD, but that didn't work. Then we tried making a new filesystem and using "cp" to just copy the whole thing. That didn't either. We didn't want to spend money on Norton Ghost, just for a one-time thing.. He ended up having to re-install and re-activate XP, re-install all his MS Office software he'd had some trouble with installing in the first place, and finally setting up a whole new system. Just because he wanted to replace his drive!
That, compared to the number of times I've moved my Linux system without a single hitch... I can't believe people put up with this crap. Now instead of keeping things simple, they're moving even FURTHER away from a file-based approach?
What, no one has asked yet whether it will run Linux? :)
I wonder what processor it will use...
I vaguely remember programming MUI a bit.. it was good, if I remember correctly, though it's muddled with whether it was ACTUALLY good or just way better than programming Amiga GUIs without it.
I think I used it a bit in a language called Amiga E, which I really enjoyed as well.
Hm, haven't thought to ever look up if it was ported to Linux..
any news on when it might be available in NA? i've been wanting a handheld game machine and have been trying to decide which to get, and i keep stalling because i want something more useful than just for gaming... this almost decides it for me!
ah... okay.
Didn't that ruin your student card?
No library for YOU!!
Because you chose to run Microsoft software. These are the consequences.
More likely: His employer chooses to run Microsoft software, and Sysinternals actually makes it tolerable.
Time to count your options...
No. Well, generally you'll have faster code if you code it in assembly. But things change when you enter the world of embedded programming... you're right, portability isn't AS important as speed. Sometimes. In certain parts of your program. But I recommend you DON'T disregard portability, even when it comes to microprocessors. In a real-world engineering project, you never know when one day parts will change, parts become obsolete, and you don't want to be left having to translate thousands of lines of assembly code.
Rather, usually whats done is that most of the code is written in C, and only those parts that REALLY REALLY have to be optimized, like interrupt handlers for example, can be done in assembly. People use assembly for routines that, for example, have to take exactly a certain number of instruction cycles to complete.
But it should be avoided as much as possible. It's just not worth losing the portability.
More and more these days, microprocessors are embedding higher level concepts, and even entire operating systems, just to make software development easier.
Cool! I think I've heard of it.. how does it perform in comparison?
Is it just as good?
I found I prefer simply being able to access my Linux partition from Windows by installing the (unfortunately not open-source) Ext3 driver.
Seems to work quite well.
Yes, unfortunately it can't be Windows' root partition, but at least I can use Windows & Linux without needing an EXTRA data partition, or using Windows on FAT32.
(Though I usually do just use FAT32 to keep things easy, because I'm not all that worried about security on my home box.)
Anyways one problem I ran into using a shared FAT32 partition is that I couldn't use files > 4GB. Haven't seriously tested it yet but I think using the Ext3 driver will fix that. (Mainly for virtual machine images for Qemu.)
Steve
I realize that OpenOffice has got an incredibly complex build system, and just sitting down and modifying is more than a simple task. However, it IS open-source, so I was wondering if anyone has considered this possibility:
What about a nice, self-contained version of OpenOffice, but with all of the GUI stuff stripped out, which instead of opening the editor, simply opens a little drag'n'drop dialog box. You select your desired "output format", and drop any document supported by OpenOffice into this window. This would include ODF files, Word docs, RTF, etc. It would then perform the equivalent of "Open" and "Save" in OpenOffice, in whatever format you specified.
Voila, instant converter!
I would think this would be a baby-step towards having a nice universal document converter. It doesn't strike me as totally necessary to have it as an Add-in to Word, at least not immediately.
Yes, this would use OpenOffice's reverse-engineering MSdoc parser for converting to ODF, rather than using Word's native code, but I imagine it would be a good start anyways, and easier to do.
Anyways, I've tried to build OO before and quickly ran out of RAM and disk space, but maybe someone would be up to the task.
In general I wouldn't assume that you'd want to be browsing the web using Internet Explorer on your hosted Windows virtual machine. You'd be using Windows mainly for running particular applications you can't get on the Mac. I don't think spyware would be much of a problem under Parallels, simply because you wouln't be using it for day-to-day browsing, etc. Likely web devs would only use it for looking at their particular website, and companies might want to run an inhouse application they haven't ported yet, etc.
I do definitely think this is cool, but I think the next logical step... and I know this would be very tricky... would be to figure out how to run programs in the Parallels operating system in a sort of "rootless" windowed way. I guess this would be pretty much impossible without modifying the hosted operating system, but if it could be figured out, it would be fantastic. Imagine having Windows windows and Gnome windows running on top of OS X seemlessly, without seeing their respective desktop backgrounds.
I suppose you could do this with X by using SSH into the hosted *nix system and running OSX's X server, but I don't see how it could be done with Windows...
Where the hell is the marker for South Africa?? It's only one of the most widely used Linux distros...
Well I was amazed to see no one had commented on their choice of LICENSE yet. It's interesting to see what MS would choose as a license in their foray into the OSS world. I would have been really surprised if they'd chosen GPL, because of obvious ethical conflicts, but I don't think I quite expected them to choose BSD.
This is significant, because it means developers are free to take the code and do what they want with it. For instance, how many people actually have Word 2007? With the BSD license someone could back-port it to previous versions...
It also implies that MS can't get away with "embrace and extend", because whatever they choose to do, someone will come along and create a custom version with the cruft removed. Consequently, I expect they just won't bother to put any in the first place. (Well, maybe that's wishful thinking.)
Additionally, if this plugin integrates badly with Word, making it difficult or non-obvious for people to use, or doesn't adequately convert certain features that it could probably handle better, someone is free to come along and improve it!
Even if the MS project doesn't accept people's suggestions and changes, the BSD license ensures that anyone is free to fork it and release their own version.
So: The fact that they chose the BSD license is a really important detail here.. very interesting move.
Man, people on cell phones can barely WALK, let alone DRIVE. I can't even count the number of times people talking on their phones have bumped into me, or stopped short right in front of me, or cut me off when I'm walking somewhere. Especially in a subway station. It's like they completely forget about what's going on around them. Argh! Pet pieve.
Didn't those issues get pushed aside because you got them?
:)
Who, me? (turns around...)
I mean, what else is there to discuss about same-sex marriage once you've started marrying them? Are you going to start un-marrying people?
Some would like to, that's for sure.
And who really wants to stop cancer patients from smoking pot? It's better for them than any other painkiller they could take.
I would agree, but again, some wouldn't.
Is your post sarcastic and I missed it?
A little, but not entirely.
Because copyright issues and military spending are much more important than stopping same sex marriage or pot smokers, because copyright and military spending affect everyone, not just a small group of people that want to do what they want.
No, I just think the above issues make for WAY more entertaining news.
But seriously, I think social issues are just as "important" as budget spending and the economy. It's part of what defines us as a nation.
And if the above issues just affect "a small group of people that want to do what they want", it wouldn't have been such a big debate.. clearly the issues DID affect lots of people would weren't even gay, or even interesting in smoking pot, because they sure like to make a big stink about these things. (No pun intended.)
But anyways, no worries, I'm not that serious about it. I was just noticing how the news really has changed since Harper came into power. That's all. The budget is being redirected and we're only just beginning to understand how it is going to affect us in the next few years. I wasn't really trying to pass judgement, although I can see how my post probably came off that way. However news items like TFA really do kind of freak me out.. I can't help but feelt his wouldn't have happened under a different administration.
All in all I'm just kind of curious how things are going to go. There's starting to be more and more of a similarly between Canadian and American news these days...
I believe that the methodology is almost immaterial. ... which is why I am a firm believer in loose coupling.
:)
Hm. Of course, "loose coupling" is a kind of methodology, no?
(I do agree with you though.)
Yeesh,... I know. What's happened?
A couple of years ago we were all debating about same-sex marriage and medicinal marijuana. Now it seems these issues have been pushed aside in favor of copyright issues and how much money goes to the military.
What the hell has changed?? What is happening this fine country?
Oh right...
Harper.
(Ps. I used to actually not mind the guy.. but now.. I dunno. Starting to get a bad impression..)
Interesting, I'm not really a web developer except for a bit of custom javascript DHTML stuff I've done.
;-)
;-)
(Yes, most of my web experience comes from the days when it was just called DHTML..)
This is the first time I've peeked into a platform like this... it's really interesting how close it is to writing a GUI application, like in SWT or something. (Again, I've only done a little bit of SWT, since I don't prefer Java most of the time, but it definitely has its place.)
But I find it amazing how it seems totally incidental that it happens to use the web for rendering its interface. What it really makes me think of is the possibility of writing multiple back-ends for it. Imagine using it to write applications that can compile to both a GUI environment, using native Win32/GTK/Cocoa elements, and then also be able to easily re-compile to a web application. Not sure there'd be any point to that, come to think of it, but the idea sounds cool for some reason.
Or imagine writing an application which is totally local, but happens to use a browser for its interface. It could embed a mini HTTP server in it.. well, I know this has been done before, but this is the first time I've seen an API that actually makes the idea somewhat attractive to me. It would solve the multiplatform GUI problem by just using whatever browser the user happens to prefer.
Anyways, now if only I could use GWT from Python instead of Java..
(Same goes for SWT by the way.. the PySWT project isn't very useful yet. Sigh..)
Yes!
Well, not to mention that it's pretty difficult to write and debug drivers for hardware that you don't own.
:)
Even if you found someone who'd be willing to work on them, chances are they won't have examples of every different wireless card available for testing. However, one-by-one, I think yes, the lead-time could easily shrink. But chances are you'd have to find a new developer for each wireless chipset, unless you're willing to donate hardware.
(It would be cool if there was some kind of pool resource that people could donate hardware to for developers to use, though that sounds awfully complicated to organize.
but isn't everyday life just product placement anyhow?
:) (but.. sigh... too true.)
great sentence.
When you browse Google Maps for example, there is a button called "Link to this page". It's needed because the URL in the address bar doesn't actually allow you to browse to the map you are viewing. This is because google has no way of dynamically specifying the "link" URL in your address bar without making your browser go to another page.
(Like when you change location.url -- it makes your browser actually go there, not just display different text in the address bar.)
Something like "Link to this page" could be implemented as a standard, so that when you're viewing an AJAX site, the "bookmark" button could be given a special URL that would actually go back to that page as intended, which the AJAX application would have to be programmed to support. The link that is actually bookmarked might differ from the one you used to get to what you are viewing, but is guaranteed to get you back there if you click it.
On the other hand, a system like that would also be very ripe for phishing exploits, so never mind.
Soooo true.
I used to be way better at video games when I was 12.
They're still fun though, but I have vague memories of actually getting past more than 2 levels of MegaMan...