Those of you who have your online roots in the BBS world may remember a company called Telegrafix, who created a vector graphics / page layout language called RIPScrip and a corresponding graphical terminal program called RIPTerm.
In early 1995, responding to the initial announcement that Unisys would be enforcing its patent (which resulted in GIF support being dropped from RIPScrip 2), Telegrafix distributed an open letter suggesting the creation of a patent-free GIF replacement using LZHUF compression, and claimed to have implimented such. Perhaps not a terribly useful idea now that PNG exists, but an interesting little historical footnote none the less.
I have many audio CD's that are over 10 years old (probably around 150 exceed 10 years), and not a single one exhibits any perceptible degradation, except for a very small number that have been physically damaged. Some of these date back as far as 1983, and even those have no audible defects. These have had quite a bit of use, and no special handling or storage, the jewel boxes that came with them. From time to time, they've even been exposed to temperatures above 100F and below 32F. I'd say 10 years for consumer audio CD's is rather conservative.
--- Peace, vilvoy
Re:This is sad, but I think we all saw it coming
on
RIAA Sues MP3.com
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· Score: 1
I think the point was not that being out of print makes piracy legal or right, just that it makes it a "victimless crime". Neither the artist nor the record company loses any money because the "pirate" had no option to buy it, at least not in such a way that the copyright holder would see any benefit from it. As for the collectors value for rare recordings, I doubt this has much effect on the value of an actual, legitimate physical recording, because they remain as rare and desireable as before. Which brings up an ethical issue that you and I might not agree on. To me it seems that collectors have no inherent "right" to have the value of their collections driven up by enforced scarcity. None of the money exchanged for the very expensive collectors items you mention goes to anyone who had anything to do with the creation, reproduction, or distribution of the art. The collectors had no role in it at all, and therefore are not entitled to anything. I don't begrudge anyone making money on collectibles, but it isn't a right, and it doesn't deserve legal protection.
An excellent point. I've been wondering the same thing myself. It really makes sense for the NSA to have an interest in improving computer security in general, not just for themselves. Even if this is freely usable to unfriendly governments and terrorist organizations, it still might be desireable. Even limiting their effectiveness against each other is a good outcome. As an analogy, if you could bomb-proof the whole world, then the bomb makers would have to find something else to do with their time. That the bomb-makers would be protected right along with everyone else doesn't change that.
Anyway, before I lost my driver's licence (proper photo id) they "searched" my laptop computer by passing this chemically wetted cloth over it. Didn't even open the lid to see if it worked or if it was really contained nothing but bomb materials.
In 1989 I passed through several airports carying a strange looking computer the size of a large suitcase. It was an industrial looking machine with VME slots in the front. Visually, it stuck out like a sore thumb compared to the things other passengers were carying, and its all metal enclosure made it opaque to the XRay machines. But even so, none of the security people gave it so much as a second glance, or even asked what it was. Granted, it wasn't anything dangerous and it was nice to travel unimpeded, but it still bothered me that the security folks expressed no visible curiosity at all.
Bleargh. First Saturday has gone down the shitter. I've been going on and off for the last 10 years or so and it's been constantly downhill.
Since I've only lived in Dallas for about 6 months, I can't compare it to its former glory, so I guess I'll just take your word for it.
My recommendation for those who need to get their weird hardware fix: Tanner's Electronics, just off of 35E on Valwood. They've always got something odd.
I'll second that recommendation. I go there several times a month. Very convenient since it's only about 1.5 miles from my house. Great stuff and always some interesting new oddity.
One of the great geek attractions here in Dallas is the "First Saturday" outdoor computer/electronics flea market. It opens at midnight and continues to noon on the first Saturday of each month. Nothing quite like shopping for computer bargains in downtown Dallas at 3:00AM. Lots of geeks running loose in the streets.
Your hypothesis -- that Unix needs to match Windows' (hey, get that apostrophe right!) market penetration is false, so your consequent is, well, inconsequential.:-)
If you re-read my post, you'll notice that I never actually presented that hypothesis. The topic was how Linux might be made viable as a mainstream OS, which is, afterall, the topic of the article that started this discussion. Whether doing that is good or bad is a seperate issue.
You can design a keyboard-based system that's just as easy to use, and more so, than a pointy-clicky one.
Of course. And I'm all for that. The key to balancing ease-of-use against flexibility is that the flexible and efficient low-level tools remain available even if there's a glitzy facade on top. There's no reason that the two approaches can't peacefully co-exist, each serving the needs and wants of a different audience, while still building on the same undrlying structure.
UI's that lock out knowlegeable users in the attempt to attract the masses are not that way because they have to be. They're just examples of bad design, probably dictated by pointy haired bosses and marketing departments. But there is a right way to do it. You _can_ have it both ways.
Apple got the GUI right the first time out, and nobody's really made any earth shattering improvements to it since.
Maybe that's the problem. Everyone is suffering from tunnel vision and can't come up with anything really innovative.
For a hint of something that a GUI might do differently, go to http://www.inxight.com and click the "site map" link. Then imagine what it might be like if your GUI could do that right on your desktop. Maybe problematic, but it could be refined. You probably can't use Inxight's "hyperbolic tree" idea as-is because of intellectual property issues, but maybe looking at it might get the creative juices flowing to help break out of the the traditional GUI thought box.
It's a good idea, but on a generic level, I don't think it's all that feasible. Maybe for a distribution like Corel's - where the target audience is newbies with no real multi-user needs. But for any serious server, IMHO this would be disastrous.
Agreed, but this is no reason not to do it. This is why having different distributions for different purposes will continue to be a good thing. Making Linux viable to those "newbies with no real multi-user needs" is exactly what this article was about. And they are also the bulk of the potential user base. You can't match Window's market penetration without doing something for them. So something like this would be great, especially in the more desktop-oriented distros like Mandrake, so long as the experts still have access to what's under the hood.
Ease of use and flexibility don't have to be mutually exclusive. You can go a long way towards making a very flexible system easy to use just by having some carefully chosen defaults and a choice of either a very detailed manual process or a "just do it" kind of button that accepts all the defaults, (maybe with a few conditionals based on what's already present) and goes on about its business with little or no further user interaction. The newbies are taken care of, and the geeks don't lose any control in the process.
Even as much as "pointy clicky" things might rub some people the wrong way, this kind of ease can be valuable even to experts. Saving time is a valid benefit even for those who do know what they're doing. Accepting an automated default install then tweaking a few things afterwards can often be much faster than manually stepping through the whole process just to arive at the same place when it's all done.
Ease of use and ease of installation/configuration have much room for improvement. And that's true to some degree under Windows as well. And if it's done right, no one has to lose anything in the process.
Sometimes I think the uber geeks who almost religiously condemn anything that even hints at being useable by non-experts are almost as small minded, (and probably even more counter-productive) as the technophobes who seem incapable of doing or exploring anything that requires reading some documentation or clicking more than one button
As little as a year ago, I think that this would be a pretty clear decision in favor of MS. Now, it's much tougher. Mandrake is now polished to such a degree that a pre-configured machine should be about as easy for a newbie to comprehend as Win9x is. But even as good as Mandrake is, I'd still have a hard time not just going with Windows.
If your mother is very old and has no prior computer experience, this might be for all practical purposes a permanent decision, since she might not have enough good years left to learn computing from scratch, then re-learn another OS if a different choice turns out to be better for her needs.
The thought of setting someone up as a Windows user _permanently_ makes it even harder to not go with Linux, but you need to put your mom's interests above your own, since she'll be the one using the machine. Make it easy for her. Give her what her friends will be using, so she can have meaningful conversations with them about computers, and so she has the option to use apps that she might want, like Quicken or a commercial tax package that just don't have good Linux alternatives right now. And think about the times when she can't get a plugin to view some cutesy web site that a friend suggests, or some web "greeting card" that someone sends her. Those things may seem better off avoided by you, but she may not see it that way. So, as much as I dislike Windows, I think it may still be the right choice for some users right now. Especially for older folks, who may not have enough lifespan or adaptability to benefit from the future improvements.
I guess it all depends on how much of a bet you want to make on the rate of development of Linux apps and/or software like Wine that would allow using Windows apps under Linux/X. (yes, I know VMware works pretty well right now, but that still requires learning a lot about two OS's, running Windows apps under Wine doesn't require quite as much learning about Windows). If a broad range of plugins appear, and most of the "application gaps" are filled with equal or better alternatives over, say, 18 to 24 months, then these things would be coming out at about the time she's far enough into the learning curve to start taking on new apps. It's a gamble. And she'd still have the problem of being on a different wavelength than most of her friends when it comes to discussing computers.
It is an idiotic patent. I have personally used this technique in a BASIC program that I wrote in the mid 1980's. It stored dates internally as 4 digits, but when entering data, would accept either two or four digits, using the described "windowing" technique to convert two digit dates. I used a 1950 to 2049 window. The only difference was the motivation for doing it. It was just to save keystrokes when entering data, rather than fixing broken software to handle the Y2K roll over.
It never even occurred to me that this trick could be patentable. It's so freakin' obvious, I'd be completely astonished if it hasn't been used by a multitude of other people too.
As for the presence of the cops, that's probably just standard procedure when valuable deliveries go astray. It's wildly inappropriate here, but think about what's usually involved in megadollar value shipments. It's not unreasonable for the cops to wonder if there's a connection between the carrier, the recepient, and the missing diamonds.
That's a reasonable hypothesis. The conspiracy theorizing about this is more than a little silly. The article doesn't even establish that it was Microsoft that called the police. It could just as easily have been UPS involving the police only because of the high value of the item and the risk of having someone try to intercept it for corporate espionage or whatever. As for no crime having been committed, dealing with criminals isn't the only thing police do. They are sometimes present only to prevent trouble. No one said they were there to arrest anyone, or that they entered illegally, or did anything else improper. It seems that some folks have already decided that anything involving MS or police MUST be a conspiracy, and search for anything that can support that view no matter how far fetched.
.If some other more suspicious info is revealed, I might change my mind. But given only the info in the article, any suspicion of wrong doing is unfounded, and the tail end of the article is just moronic.
Imax hasn't caught on, but it serves it's purpose in showing dazzling movies about the wonders of the pyramids or life and death in Serengeti.
There's a new _commercial_ 3D IMax theatre that opened just a few months ago less than two miles from where I live.
The upcoming "Fantasia 2000" is supposed to be released in this format, and I've read that there may be some future Star Wars stuff in this format as well.
Of course, there are only a hand full of these theatres in existence, so I don't know if all this really qualifies as "catching on".
Also, going to digital projection systems will have one incredibly bad side effect - cutting smaller theaters totally out of the loop. We're talking $100k upgrades here, places like the Brattle Theater and Coolidge Corner (in Boston) will no longer be able to show anything remotely new.
Maybe they'll use their more limited budgets to buy MaxiVision48 systems and win back some market share from the big guys.
There may be room for both technologies, maybe even within the same theatre.
Also, some of the problems he sites are inherently true of any digital system - the current distribution system of a bunch of 18G hard drives trucked to the theaters is infeasible. To use satellites at the unacceptable 1280x1024 resolution would take 10x more compression than the system they demonstrated.
That objection I don't necessarily agree with. The transmission of a movie to the theatre doesn't necessarily have to be real time, so higher compression may not be necessary. And as to the limited bandwidth of sattelites, sattelites obviously aren't the only way to send data. Leasing high-bandwidth lines from the telcos just like we do now for most of the Internet might be a better way to go.
Right now, some theatres (in LA) have raised ticket prices to $9! How much do you think they'll raise prices to recoup the costs of a digital projection system?
Probably not all that much really. Is the $150K for a digital projector all that big a portion of the total cost of building and operating a theatre? And when you divide it out over all the tickets a popular theatre sells, it will probably pay for itself fairly quickly, especially if it's mere presence attracts higher attendance.
Of course, they may charge more anyway, just to take advantage of the hype surrounding the digital projectors. At least the early adopters will have the opportunity to do this. As the new wears off, people won't be so influenced by it.
What I'm interested in with the digital projectors isn't so much their performance when displaying the static and linear content of a movie, which from all I've read is questionable at best, but rather the new uses that people might find that allows doing things that can't be done with film, like content that is non-linear, or transmitted live. It sounds like it would be much better than the large-screen displays that are currently used at some rock concerts, for example.
This is absurd. Ebert sees a demonstration of the current implementation of a video projection system, doesn't like what he sees, and then jumps to the ludicrous conclusion that "digital" projection is inherently a Bad Thing.
I don't think that was Ebert's conclusion at all. He merely pointed out that these much overhyped digital projectors are at best equal to good current film equipment, and in some ways maybe not even as good, and more importantly, that their hype may be stealing attention from a much superior new film based system that actually costs much less to implement while still giving significantly better results.
I think it's great that he had the guts to publicly question the hype surrounding the digital projectors. His high profile may be just what the developers of the MaxiVision48 system need. And if they win, we win.
Digital definitely does not equal bad, but neither does it automatically equal superior. I'd choose an excellent film based system over a mediocre digital one.
I don't think Ebert is a Luddite, and neither am I. The digital projectors, even as they exist now, are a great thing and may very well open up a slew of possibilities that traditional film can't offer. Using them in a planetarium to project real time computer graphics on the dome comes to mind, as does video billboards and public information displays. I'm sure there are many more great applications. But for the projection of traditional, non-interactive movies, film still offers superior performance. As the digital systems improve, it may eventially match or beat the quality of the best film based systems. And when that happens, I'll be all for it. I suspect Mr. Ebert will too.
I think diversity and competition ar the greatest strengths in the Linux market. That this move by Red Hat does not close the door for competitors is just that much more reason to admire them for it. Their funding of these projects doesn't keep them from being used with competing distributions. And helping Sendmail certainly doesn't look like they've forgotten about servers. I wish them success, but not so much that competing products can't challenge them.
I lost the html breaks in one of my recent posts by previewing it, then submitting it from there since it looked ok. Unfortunately, the html tags weren't in the "comment" area on the preview page, so the submitted text lost all the formatting that was visible in the preview.
This is something that has bothered me too. In the Windows world, the mouse buttons are sometimes referred to as "select" and "alt select", or "click" and "alt click". Not the greatest names, but it does at least avoid the problem with left-button/right-button.
Unfortunately, these are far from universal, and are so rarely used that people just don't know what you are talking about when you use them. When I was doing tech support for an ISP, I tried to use the "select" "alt select" nomenclature, but got tired of having to explain the words every time I used them. So I reverted to using the words "left click" and "right click" since people generally understood what this means, and even the unfortunate lefty's at least had heard it enough to understand it even though it was incorrect.
This is not an easy thing to overcome, though anyone who wants to try has my moral support. If an established "authority" like the LDP or XFree were to make a standard terminology "official", then it might be possible, especially if this inspires other "authorities" to follow suit.
"It's disappointing that the movement to make a free Unix seems now to have turned into a movement to make a free Windows."
If any of the underlying functionality were being removed, I might share your disappointment. But it isn't, so I don't. You don't have to use KDE if you don't want to. And if you do use it, it still does absolutely nothing to keep you from utilising the full capability of the OS that runs beneath it. The reality is that Windows, Mac, etc., while lacking some of Unix's capabilities, have done some things right, and have even done a few things better (the question about printing capability, being a good example). To acknowlege those successes and to bring equivalent capability to the Unix/Linux world is crucial to any future success of these powerful OS's. OS puritanism does absolutely nothing to benefit your favorite OS. Projects that strive to make Unix/Linux more usable to a wider audience are not taking away any of the capabilities that existing unix users know and love. They only add more capability. KDE, Gnome and Mandrake are all too often condemned for their efforts when they deserve to be applauded.
If it's the lack of pipes and sequential operations under the GUI that worries you, then perhaps you would do better to help implement these functions. If, like me, you don't have the programming skill and/or available time to implement this yourself, then at least offer it as a constructive suggestion for improvement instead of using it to bash the work that's already been done.
I would also like to point out that X itself already has some capabilities that Windows lacks. The free unix movement is certainly not turning into a free windows movement. But it would be truly sad if no effort were made to gain those capabilities in which we are clearly behind. We already have superiority in some areas, so if we can gain at least equality in all other areas, we will come out ahead.
There is nothing at all inherently wrong with making computer user interfaces attractive or easy to learn and use. It only becomes a problem if these applications become effectively sealed "black boxes" such that the more technically inclined can no longer "get under the hood" and tinker with the machinery.Those of us who've been around a while, whether as developers or just users, have seen these anti-progress arguments before. Long before GUI's became common, there was a transition from mostly command driven user interfaces, to menu driven user interfaces. Some of the old-timers decried this as a "dumbing down" of computer applications, trading away real computing capability in favor of appealing to the mindless masses. Wrong-headed as it may have been, this was not the opinion of idiots, but of very intelligent and knowlegable people. And this is because it contained an element of truth. It was in fact quite possible to design easy-to-use apps that while beneficial to newbies and very casual users, were a hinderance to experts and professional users. And of course, there were plenty of apps written that had exactly that problem. The attitude was reinforced by the tendency of profit-driven companies to develop what would make the most money, rather than what would work best for a small number of gurus. So the gurus sometimes felt betrayed and abandoned. But ultimately, their objections proved largely unfounded. Granted, it can be much quicker to type a command or a hot-key combination than to navigate a multi-level menu, but there's no reason you can't have the best of both worlds. It is now common, and has been for a very long time, to have keyboard shortcuts for commonly used functions. Often, the shortcuts are identified on the menus themselves, making the app not only easy to use for newbies, but self documenting to help them gain more proficiency, overcoming their newbie-itis. The original objections of the nay-sayers only served to slow progress and hinder solutions to the very problems they were bitching and moaning about. They would have done better by turning their considerable talents towards overcoming the shortcomings of the new user interface concepts rather than railing against them.Even gurus who expertly use complex applications daily, can occasionally benefit from applications that they might only use once in a great while. Does it make sense to have to spend a month mastering something that you will probably only use for a few hours over your entire lifetime? Am I an idiot or a wimp if I don't bother to explore these rarely used apps much beyond their tool bars and menus? If I did this for apps I use extensively, then "idiot" or "wimp" might be appropriate terms, but life is short and it just isn't humanly possible to master the intimate details all of the complex tools that we have available. But does this mean that we should deny ourselves the benefits of these tools by refusing to make them more easily accessible? Ease of learning and ease of use are good things that even intelligent, non-technophobic people should embrace, and perhaps should be the very first to embrace. Ease of use and ease of learning are not at all mutually exclusive with flexibility and capability. Religiously defending one while ridiculing the others is an attitude that can only do harm, and it is an attitude that will have to be overcome in order to progress.As for KDE, I don't think there's anything to complain or worry about. As someone pointed out, the developers are technically oriented unix users to begin with. While they do have a goal of making their products appealing and useful to new and non-technical users, there is no indication of any intent to idiot-proof to the extent of creating sealed "black boxes". As indicated by others, configuration files are still editable, and additional functionality beyond what exists in other popular GUI's is in fact in the works, but even so, providing the capabilities that these other GUI's offer is certainly something worth persuing. I just hate it when a dyed-in-the-wool Mac or Windows user points out something that he can do on his machine that can't be done, or at least can't be done as easily, on my Linux box. This is a problem worth remedying. And slamming those who are working to remedy it is like biting the hand that feeds you.---Peace,vilvoy
Slashdot Mirror
Those of you who have your online roots in the BBS world may remember a company called Telegrafix, who created a vector graphics / page layout language called RIPScrip and a corresponding graphical terminal program called RIPTerm.
In early 1995, responding to the initial announcement that Unisys would be enforcing its patent (which resulted in GIF support being dropped from RIPScrip 2), Telegrafix distributed an open letter suggesting the creation of a patent-free GIF replacement using LZHUF compression, and claimed to have implimented such. Perhaps not a terribly useful idea now that PNG exists, but an interesting little historical footnote none the less.
Peace,
vilvoy
I have many audio CD's that are over 10 years old (probably around 150 exceed 10 years), and not a single one exhibits any perceptible degradation, except for a very small number that have been physically damaged. Some of these date back as far as 1983, and even those have no audible defects. These have had quite a bit of use, and no special handling or storage, the jewel boxes that came with them. From time to time, they've even been exposed to temperatures above 100F and below 32F. I'd say 10 years for consumer audio CD's is rather conservative.
---
Peace,
vilvoy
I think the point was not that being out of print makes piracy legal or right, just that it makes it a "victimless crime". Neither the artist nor the record company loses any money because the "pirate" had no option to buy it, at least not in such a way that the copyright holder would see any benefit from it. As for the collectors value for rare recordings, I doubt this has much effect on the value of an actual, legitimate physical recording, because they remain as rare and desireable as before. Which brings up an ethical issue that you and I might not agree on. To me it seems that collectors have no inherent "right" to have the value of their collections driven up by enforced scarcity. None of the money exchanged for the very expensive collectors items you mention goes to anyone who had anything to do with the creation, reproduction, or distribution of the art. The collectors had no role in it at all, and therefore are not entitled to anything. I don't begrudge anyone making money on collectibles, but it isn't a right, and it doesn't deserve legal protection.
---
Peace,
vilvoy
An excellent point. I've been wondering the same thing myself. It really makes sense for the NSA to have an interest in improving computer security in general, not just for themselves. Even if this is freely usable to unfriendly governments and terrorist organizations, it still might be desireable. Even limiting their effectiveness against each other is a good outcome. As an analogy, if you could bomb-proof the whole world, then the bomb makers would have to find something else to do with their time. That the bomb-makers would be protected right along with everyone else doesn't change that.
---
Peace,
vilvoy
Anyway, before I lost my driver's licence (proper photo id) they "searched" my laptop computer by passing this chemically wetted cloth
over it. Didn't even open the lid to see if it worked or if it was really contained nothing but bomb materials.
In 1989 I passed through several airports carying a strange looking computer the size of a large suitcase. It was an industrial looking machine with VME slots in the front. Visually, it stuck out like a sore thumb compared to the things other passengers were carying, and its all metal enclosure made it opaque to the XRay machines. But even so, none of the security people gave it so much as a second glance, or even asked what it was. Granted, it wasn't anything dangerous and it was nice to travel unimpeded, but it still bothered me that the security folks expressed no visible curiosity at all.
---
Peace,
vilvoy
Bleargh. First Saturday has gone down the shitter. I've been going on and off for the last 10 years or so and it's been constantly downhill.
Since I've only lived in Dallas for about 6 months, I can't compare it to its former glory, so I guess I'll just take your word for it.
My recommendation for those who need to get their weird hardware fix: Tanner's Electronics, just off of 35E on Valwood. They've always got something odd.
I'll second that recommendation. I go there several times a month. Very convenient since it's only about 1.5 miles from my house. Great stuff and always some interesting new oddity.
---
Peace,
vilvoy
One of the great geek attractions here in Dallas is the "First Saturday" outdoor computer/electronics flea market. It opens at midnight and continues to noon on the first Saturday of each month. Nothing quite like shopping for computer bargains in downtown Dallas at 3:00AM. Lots of geeks running loose in the streets.
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Peace,
vilvoy
Your hypothesis -- that Unix needs to match Windows' (hey, get that apostrophe right!) market penetration is false, so your consequent is, well, inconsequential. :-)
If you re-read my post, you'll notice that I never actually presented that hypothesis. The topic was how Linux might be made viable as a mainstream OS, which is, afterall, the topic of the article that started this discussion. Whether doing that is good or bad is a seperate issue.
---
Peace,
vilvoy
You can design a keyboard-based system that's just as easy to use, and more so, than a pointy-clicky one.
Of course. And I'm all for that. The key to balancing ease-of-use against flexibility is that the flexible and efficient low-level tools remain available even if there's a glitzy facade on top. There's no reason that the two approaches can't peacefully co-exist, each serving the needs and wants of a different audience, while still building on the same undrlying structure.
UI's that lock out knowlegeable users in the attempt to attract the masses are not that way because they have to be. They're just examples of bad design, probably dictated by pointy haired bosses and marketing departments. But there is a right way to do it. You _can_ have it both ways.
---
Peace,
vilvoy
Apple got the GUI right the first time out, and nobody's really made any earth shattering improvements to it since.
Maybe that's the problem. Everyone is suffering from tunnel vision and can't come up with anything really innovative.
For a hint of something that a GUI might do differently, go to http://www.inxight.com and click the "site map" link. Then imagine what it might be like if your GUI could do that right on your desktop. Maybe problematic, but it could be refined. You probably can't use Inxight's "hyperbolic tree" idea as-is because of intellectual property issues, but maybe looking at it might get the creative juices flowing to help break out of the the traditional GUI thought box.
---
Peace,
vilvoy
It's a good idea, but on a generic level, I don't think it's all that feasible. Maybe for a distribution like Corel's - where the target audience is newbies with no real multi-user needs. But for any serious server, IMHO this would be disastrous.
Agreed, but this is no reason not to do it. This is why having different distributions for different purposes will continue to be a good thing. Making Linux viable to those "newbies with no real multi-user needs" is exactly what this article was about. And they are also the bulk of the potential user base. You can't match Window's market penetration without doing something for them. So something like this would be great, especially in the more desktop-oriented distros like Mandrake, so long as the experts still have access to what's under the hood.
---
Peace,
vilvoy
Ease of use and flexibility don't have to be mutually exclusive. You can go a long way towards making a very flexible system easy to use just by having some carefully chosen defaults and a choice of either a very detailed manual process or a "just do it" kind of button that accepts all the defaults, (maybe with a few conditionals based on what's already present) and goes on about its business with little or no further user interaction. The newbies are taken care of, and the geeks don't lose any control in the process.
Even as much as "pointy clicky" things might rub some people the wrong way, this kind of ease can be valuable even to experts. Saving time is a valid benefit even for those who do know what they're doing. Accepting an automated default install then tweaking a few things afterwards can often be much faster than manually stepping through the whole process just to arive at the same place when it's all done.
Ease of use and ease of installation/configuration have much room for improvement. And that's true to some degree under Windows as well. And if it's done right, no one has to lose anything in the process.
Sometimes I think the uber geeks who almost religiously condemn anything that even hints at being useable by non-experts are almost as small minded, (and probably even more counter-productive) as the technophobes who seem incapable of doing or exploring anything that requires reading some documentation or clicking more than one button
---
Peace,
vilvoy
As little as a year ago, I think that this would be a pretty clear decision in favor of MS. Now, it's much tougher. Mandrake is now polished to such a degree that a pre-configured machine should be about as easy for a newbie to comprehend as Win9x is. But even as good as Mandrake is, I'd still have a hard time not just going with Windows.
If your mother is very old and has no prior computer experience, this might be for all practical purposes a permanent decision, since she might not have enough good years left to learn computing from scratch, then re-learn another OS if a different choice turns out to be better for her needs.
The thought of setting someone up as a Windows user _permanently_ makes it even harder to not go with Linux, but you need to put your mom's interests above your own, since she'll be the one using the machine. Make it easy for her. Give her what her friends will be using, so she can have meaningful conversations with them about computers, and so she has the option to use apps that she might want, like Quicken or a commercial tax package that just don't have good Linux alternatives right now. And think about the times when she can't get a plugin to view some cutesy web site that a friend suggests, or some web "greeting card" that someone sends her. Those things may seem better off avoided by you, but she may not see it that way. So, as much as I dislike Windows, I think it may still be the right choice for some users right now. Especially for older folks, who may not have enough lifespan or adaptability to benefit from the future improvements.
I guess it all depends on how much of a bet you want to make on the rate of development of Linux apps and/or software like Wine that would allow using Windows apps under Linux/X. (yes, I know VMware works pretty well right now, but that still requires learning a lot about two OS's, running Windows apps under Wine doesn't require quite as much learning about Windows). If a broad range of plugins appear, and most of the "application gaps" are filled with equal or better alternatives over, say, 18 to 24 months, then these things would be coming out at about the time she's far enough into the learning curve to start taking on new apps. It's a gamble. And she'd still have the problem of being on a different wavelength than most of her friends when it comes to discussing computers.
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Peace,
vilvoy
It is an idiotic patent. I have personally used this technique in a BASIC program that I wrote in the mid 1980's. It stored dates internally as 4 digits, but when entering data, would accept either two or four digits, using the described "windowing" technique to convert two digit dates. I used a 1950 to 2049 window. The only difference was the motivation for doing it. It was just to save keystrokes when entering data, rather than fixing broken software to handle the Y2K roll over.
It never even occurred to me that this trick could be patentable. It's so freakin' obvious, I'd be completely astonished if it hasn't been used by a multitude of other people too.
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Peace,
vilvoy
As for the presence of the cops, that's probably just standard procedure when valuable deliveries go astray. It's wildly inappropriate here, but think about what's usually involved in megadollar value shipments. It's not unreasonable for the cops to wonder if there's a connection between the carrier, the recepient, and the missing diamonds.
That's a reasonable hypothesis. The conspiracy theorizing about this is more than a little silly. The article doesn't even establish that it was Microsoft that called the police. It could just as easily have been UPS involving the police only because of the high value of the item and the risk of having someone try to intercept it for corporate espionage or whatever. As for no crime having been committed, dealing with criminals isn't the only thing police do. They are sometimes present only to prevent trouble. No one said they were there to arrest anyone, or that they entered illegally, or did anything else improper. It seems that some folks have already decided that anything involving MS or police MUST be a conspiracy, and search for anything that can support that view no matter how far fetched.
.If some other more suspicious info is revealed, I might change my mind. But given only the info in the article, any suspicion of wrong doing is unfounded, and the tail end of the article is just moronic.
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Peace,
vilvoy
Imax hasn't caught on, but it serves it's purpose in showing dazzling movies about the wonders of the pyramids or life and death in Serengeti.
There's a new _commercial_ 3D IMax theatre that opened just a few months ago less than two miles from where I live.
The upcoming "Fantasia 2000" is supposed to be released in this format, and I've read that there may be some future Star Wars stuff in this format as well.
Of course, there are only a hand full of these theatres in existence, so I don't know if all this really qualifies as "catching on".
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Peace,
vilvoy
Also, going to digital projection systems will have one incredibly bad side effect - cutting smaller theaters totally out of the loop. We're talking $100k upgrades here, places like the Brattle Theater and Coolidge Corner (in Boston) will no longer be able to show anything remotely new.
Maybe they'll use their more limited budgets to buy MaxiVision48 systems and win back some market share from the big guys.
There may be room for both technologies, maybe even within the same theatre.
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Peace,
vilvoy
Also, some of the problems he sites are inherently true of any digital system - the current distribution system of a bunch of 18G hard drives trucked to the theaters is infeasible. To use satellites at the unacceptable 1280x1024 resolution would take 10x more compression than the system they demonstrated.
That objection I don't necessarily agree with. The transmission of a movie to the theatre doesn't necessarily have to be real time, so higher compression may not be necessary. And as to the limited bandwidth of sattelites, sattelites obviously aren't the only way to send data. Leasing high-bandwidth lines from the telcos just like we do now for most of the Internet might be a better way to go.
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Peace,
vilvoy
Right now, some theatres (in LA) have raised ticket prices to $9! How much do you think they'll raise prices to recoup the costs of a digital projection system?
Probably not all that much really. Is the $150K for a digital projector all that big a portion of the total cost of building and operating a theatre? And when you divide it out over all the tickets a popular theatre sells, it will probably pay for itself fairly quickly, especially if it's mere presence attracts higher attendance.
Of course, they may charge more anyway, just to take advantage of the hype surrounding the digital projectors. At least the early adopters will have the opportunity to do this. As the new wears off, people won't be so influenced by it.
What I'm interested in with the digital projectors isn't so much their performance when displaying the static and linear content of a movie, which from all I've read is questionable at best, but rather the new uses that people might find that allows doing things that can't be done with film, like content that is non-linear, or transmitted live. It sounds like it would be much better than the large-screen displays that are currently used at some rock concerts, for example.
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Peace,
vilvoy
This is absurd. Ebert sees a demonstration of the current implementation of a video projection system, doesn't like what he sees, and then jumps to the ludicrous conclusion that "digital" projection is inherently a Bad Thing.
I don't think that was Ebert's conclusion at all. He merely pointed out that these much overhyped digital projectors are at best equal to good current film equipment, and in some ways maybe not even as good, and more importantly, that their hype may be stealing attention from a much superior new film based system that actually costs much less to implement while still giving significantly better results.
I think it's great that he had the guts to publicly question the hype surrounding the digital projectors. His high profile may be just what the developers of the MaxiVision48 system need. And if they win, we win.
Digital definitely does not equal bad, but neither does it automatically equal superior. I'd choose an excellent film based system over a mediocre digital one.
I don't think Ebert is a Luddite, and neither am I. The digital projectors, even as they exist now, are a great thing and may very well open up a slew of possibilities that traditional film can't offer. Using them in a planetarium to project real time computer graphics on the dome comes to mind, as does video billboards and public information displays. I'm sure there are many more great applications. But for the projection of traditional, non-interactive movies, film still offers superior performance. As the digital systems improve, it may eventially match or beat the quality of the best film based systems. And when that happens, I'll be all for it. I suspect Mr. Ebert will too.
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Peace,
vilvoy
I think diversity and competition ar the greatest strengths in the Linux market. That this move by Red Hat does not close the door for competitors is just that much more reason to admire them for it. Their funding of these projects doesn't keep them from being used with competing distributions. And helping Sendmail certainly doesn't look like they've forgotten about servers. I wish them success, but not so much that competing products can't challenge them.
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Peace,
vilvoy
I lost the html breaks in one of my recent posts by previewing it, then submitting it from there since it looked ok. Unfortunately, the html tags weren't in the "comment" area on the preview page, so the submitted text lost all the formatting that was visible in the preview.
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Peace,
vilvoy
This is something that has bothered me too. In the Windows world, the mouse buttons are sometimes referred to as "select" and "alt select", or "click" and "alt click". Not the greatest names, but it does at least avoid the problem with left-button/right-button.
Unfortunately, these are far from universal, and are so rarely used that people just don't know what you are talking about when you use them. When I was doing tech support for an ISP, I tried to use the "select" "alt select" nomenclature, but got tired of having to explain the words every time I used them. So I reverted to using the words "left click" and "right click" since people generally understood what this means, and even the unfortunate lefty's at least had heard it enough to understand it even though it was incorrect.
This is not an easy thing to overcome, though anyone who wants to try has my moral support. If an established "authority" like the LDP or XFree were to make a standard terminology "official", then it might be possible, especially if this inspires other "authorities" to follow suit.
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Peace,
vilvoy
"It's disappointing that the movement to make a free Unix seems now to have turned into a movement to make a free Windows."
If any of the underlying functionality were being removed, I might share your disappointment. But it isn't, so I don't. You don't have to use KDE if you don't want to. And if you do use it, it still does absolutely nothing to keep you from utilising the full capability of the OS that runs beneath it. The reality is that Windows, Mac, etc., while lacking some of Unix's capabilities, have done some things right, and have even done a few things better (the question about printing capability, being a good example). To acknowlege those successes and to bring equivalent capability to the Unix/Linux world is crucial to any future success of these powerful OS's. OS puritanism does absolutely nothing to benefit your favorite OS. Projects that strive to make Unix/Linux more usable to a wider audience are not taking away any of the capabilities that existing unix users know and love. They only add more capability. KDE, Gnome and Mandrake are all too often condemned for their efforts when they deserve to be applauded.
If it's the lack of pipes and sequential operations under the GUI that worries you, then perhaps you would do better to help implement these functions. If, like me, you don't have the programming skill and/or available time to implement this yourself, then at least offer it as a constructive suggestion for improvement instead of using it to bash the work that's already been done.
I would also like to point out that X itself already has some capabilities that Windows lacks. The free unix movement is certainly not turning into a free windows movement. But it would be truly sad if no effort were made to gain those capabilities in which we are clearly behind. We already have superiority in some areas, so if we can gain at least equality in all other areas, we will come out ahead.
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Peace,
vilvoy
There is nothing at all inherently wrong with making computer user interfaces attractive or easy to learn and use. It only becomes a problem if these applications become effectively sealed "black boxes" such that the more technically inclined can no longer "get under the hood" and tinker with the machinery.Those of us who've been around a while, whether as developers or just users, have seen these anti-progress arguments before. Long before GUI's became common, there was a transition from mostly command driven user interfaces, to menu driven user interfaces. Some of the old-timers decried this as a "dumbing down" of computer applications, trading away real computing capability in favor of appealing to the mindless masses. Wrong-headed as it may have been, this was not the opinion of idiots, but of very intelligent and knowlegable people. And this is because it contained an element of truth. It was in fact quite possible to design easy-to-use apps that while beneficial to newbies and very casual users, were a hinderance to experts and professional users. And of course, there were plenty of apps written that had exactly that problem. The attitude was reinforced by the tendency of profit-driven companies to develop what would make the most money, rather than what would work best for a small number of gurus. So the gurus sometimes felt betrayed and abandoned. But ultimately, their objections proved largely unfounded. Granted, it can be much quicker to type a command or a hot-key combination than to navigate a multi-level menu, but there's no reason you can't have the best of both worlds. It is now common, and has been for a very long time, to have keyboard shortcuts for commonly used functions. Often, the shortcuts are identified on the menus themselves, making the app not only easy to use for newbies, but self documenting to help them gain more proficiency, overcoming their newbie-itis. The original objections of the nay-sayers only served to slow progress and hinder solutions to the very problems they were bitching and moaning about. They would have done better by turning their considerable talents towards overcoming the shortcomings of the new user interface concepts rather than railing against them.Even gurus who expertly use complex applications daily, can occasionally benefit from applications that they might only use once in a great while. Does it make sense to have to spend a month mastering something that you will probably only use for a few hours over your entire lifetime? Am I an idiot or a wimp if I don't bother to explore these rarely used apps much beyond their tool bars and menus? If I did this for apps I use extensively, then "idiot" or "wimp" might be appropriate terms, but life is short and it just isn't humanly possible to master the intimate details all of the complex tools that we have available. But does this mean that we should deny ourselves the benefits of these tools by refusing to make them more easily accessible? Ease of learning and ease of use are good things that even intelligent, non-technophobic people should embrace, and perhaps should be the very first to embrace. Ease of use and ease of learning are not at all mutually exclusive with flexibility and capability. Religiously defending one while ridiculing the others is an attitude that can only do harm, and it is an attitude that will have to be overcome in order to progress.As for KDE, I don't think there's anything to complain or worry about. As someone pointed out, the developers are technically oriented unix users to begin with. While they do have a goal of making their products appealing and useful to new and non-technical users, there is no indication of any intent to idiot-proof to the extent of creating sealed "black boxes". As indicated by others, configuration files are still editable, and additional functionality beyond what exists in other popular GUI's is in fact in the works, but even so, providing the capabilities that these other GUI's offer is certainly something worth persuing. I just hate it when a dyed-in-the-wool Mac or Windows user points out something that he can do on his machine that can't be done, or at least can't be done as easily, on my Linux box. This is a problem worth remedying. And slamming those who are working to remedy it is like biting the hand that feeds you.---Peace,vilvoy