I think operating systems will increasing become less and less of a concern for all of us, except for hardware scientists. Those of us more interested in applications care more about the platform, which I see over time being standardized in freedesktop.org, with various implementations or bindings in about every major "platform" interpreter/machine, be it C(++)/Kernel, the JVM, the CLR, or Mozilla. I also see all the major scripting languages having JVM and.NET ports one day.
In this article, the author is concerned about FUTURE progress of the Linux desktop, citing an imbalance in both the Gnome and KDE communities as cause for his concern:
1) Gnome: Plenty of money, few developers 2) KDE: Plenty of developers, little money
He also argues that because we're only seeing point releases from Gnome, progress there is slowing down, while in KDE, we no longer have significant point releases because everyone's focused on KDE 4, though there hasn't been any visual results yet out of the Plasma project.
In my opinion, this article is a lot of worry-worting. Sure, Gnome and KDE could *always* use more cash and developers, duh. But are the projects hitting some sort of dead end or breaking point where they'll cease to be effective? Hardly. Will they be able to surpass Vista and/or OSX in functionality? Depends on what you're looking for. Even now, some people prefer Windows, others OSX, and others Linux. Most people just put up with Windows, actually.
Thom is really into OS development, but I'm not sure how technical he is, so I think he may be more interested in what happens in the visual department. KDE 4 has little to show there, but a lot in the libraries that Plasma will sit on top of. I'm especially excited about Kross, which rivals MS's (as yet unreleased) Monad/Powershell.
What's unique about KDE4 (and why we really need it in addition to Gnome) is that it's going to be installable on Linux and BSD as well as Windows and OSX. That's pretty innovative if you ask me.
I don't think Plasma in KDE4 is going to bring about the radical changes some may be hoping for. There have been some interesting posts in discussion boards for both Gnome 3 (Topaz) and KDE4 for radical shifts, but usually these people are directed to look at Symphony OS, since most suggestions seem to revolve around creating a task-oriented desktop or else merging the desktop and browser into one environment.
All in all, I see nothing wrong with Gnome and KDE taking a more evolutionary approach. This is natural for any software so mature. The OSS kernels aren't going to see HUGE gains, just incremental improvements, but over the course of a year, you can see a lot of new innovations, just as you will with Gnome and KDE. An evolutionary approach to software development might not be as exciting for journalists and fans, but it sure makes more sense from a technical perspective: release early, small, and often.
Hmm, I think your view of Christianity is skewed. That may be how the Christian religion at large works, but that's how every religion at large works.
The main point of the Bible is that it's not by our actions that we're saved, but by God's action. Read the Bible from beginning to end, and you can see how the religion evolved by God's will... how it was in the beginning and finally by the end are very similar, and in the middle you have the Laws, but at the end you're told that this isn't how it was meant to be, but was merely a system to guide a large population in discovering grace.
You should really study the Bible and see for yourself on this. I'd think you'd find it is very non-religious, and just all about what a badass God is.
As a Christian, the way I see it, God took all the action to save humanity in the manner he chose, namely, live on earth as a regular human and die in such the way he did. While on the cross, all the sin and evil of the world entered into him, and through this union he purified sin. This creates the bridge between God and man, and enables us to have fellowship and friendship with him.
What I don't agree with is the popular United States Christianity's exclusivity on the matter of Jesus, even though you can see prophetic imprints of this event in the subconsiouses of every culture on earth. To me, Christ is the Tao and the Buddha, and just plain everything! But he is more tangible than metaphysics; he's God in the flesh, which is very important because it shows God is real and God is the one who has taken the initiative to save humans -- not by our effort, our prayers and meditations, but by God's choice and action and sacrifice.
The God in the Bible isn't described as having immutable thoughts, though. Otherwise, isn't God just a bag of properties that respond robotically to various situations? I wouldn't call that a God.
Rather, I think God has a conscious will, meaning He can and does change his mind with respect to various situations.
At a much deeper level, however, perhaps at some core concept we can't define, I do think God is completely anchored. Love, perhaps, or something even beyond what we can encompass with a word.
I'll join your group:) Well, I'm already a member!
I'm a Christian, and love telling others about Christ and what he has done for humankind, but my evangelical zeal is not motivated by fear of Hell -- for myself or for others. Such motivation results in a spoiled message, I believe, because the Gospel is Good News, not Bad News, and telling someone they're going to Hell unless they do A, B, and C is news to most people.
I've read the Bible intensely, and from what I've gathered, God judges people based on whether they are "good" or "bad", a delineation no human can make, because only God truly knows how to separate light from darkness. So I leave all judgment up to him. God doesn't speak our language, even. "God" itself is a meaningless word. He is a force of Being, Life, Action, Will itself that causes life to shine in the dead universe against all odds.
My motivation to tell others about Christ is because it culminates my joy in life. My salvation is NOT because I
1) Confessed 2) Repented 3) Was Baptized 4) Stay faithful through prayer and scriptural meditation
but because GOD died! GOD was baptized in all the evil and sin that has ever been. He soaked the evil up as surely as bread dipped in wine. It entered him, became him, and he became it. And through this unity, he purified evil.
By believing these things, the entire world has been turned upside down for me. I am not saved because I pray, etc. I pray and do good because I am saved! When I do good, I know it is God confirming to me that He lives within me.
So, I try to judge a tree by its fruit. If I see good, I know it is God acting. I have seen God acting in atheists. For them, God is an implicit force.
God gave his blood for the earth, for all life and existence. Because of this, we Live.
However, one of the scientists went too far, and replaced every iron atom at the center of his porphyrin molecules with zinc, transforming him into Hydro Man -- but only when he went out into the sunlight.
I guess I should learn then to distinguish between things that are evident and the formal use of the word "evidence". I didn't mean to offend any discipline, such as science, that uses this word in its terminology. I can see now that I'm using it in a context that doesn't fit in with the rest of the dicussion.
I guess I'm too old-fasioned, because I'm using the word "evidence" like "we hold these truths to be self-evident", you know, there's no data that proves all men are creating equal and whatnot. People back then were just more flexible with the word, and I haven't caught on yet.
Con-sarn it though, I'm not going to have you kids befuddling my verbiage. Now pop off while I go and have a gaye olde tyme with this here Java code.
You're right... I don't have evidence that can be expressed as data that serves the purpose of proving God. Sure, I can decompose my experience into data, but none that will prove God in a scientific way.
I don't think God should be taught in schools. In that context, there is no data or evidence.
Now, when I'm a grandpa here soon, I will tell my grandchildren about my life experience, and perhaps that will influence them to believe in God. But ultimately, whether they believe or not is something they totally do on their own. Predisposition to it, perhaps. Or a God-belief gene. But if there is such a thing as a God-belief gene, it would be kind of paradoxical to have one and yet not believe in God, like having code for black hair yet be born a blondy.
Heheh, hope this conversation has been interesting to you. No offense toward your way of life though. Just don't become president and take away my right to worship!:)
I don't really want to give myself credibility to you or anyone else by using a certain word. That wasn't my intention. Personal evidence is indeed not objective evidence.
But it's evidence to me. I've chosen to value my own instinct above the rational consensus for a few things, such as God.
If you understand that I'm not an evangelistic believer, then maybe you'll see where I'm coming from. I'm of the opinion that you can't really "convince" someone to believe in God -- they were going to either believe or not believe on their own, despite any fine words I may compose. If it's not totally on their own anyways, then I cast their belief into question.
So I don't want to discredit the evidence of a well-defined system that works: science. I respect science as a tool for understanding the processes of the Universe, and agree with the article that teachers shouldn't try to "convert" *cough* coerce *cough* impressionable kids into any sort of belief system that goes down core to the worldview.
I think people are just fooling themselves if they think they've adopted a fully objective reality, and I can't see the case for that being something to strife for. It does help mediate conflict when we all try to form rational consensus on truth using a well-defined set of rules (like science or logic), but at the same time, tolerance and love can mediate just as well, and leave us with a much more diverse and interesting planet to live on IMO. It's dangerous beauty, the irrational instinctual part of the human mind, but I feel more in touch with my nature when I believe in God: I'm happier, more creative, more at peace. Things with God make sense to me. God's just axiomatic to me.
It could all be because of a gene for all I know: a God-gene. But still, this is my perception, this is me, and I feel no need to try and join the logical consensus on every major decision in my life.
I guess this is what faith feels like.
See you all -- I'm going over here to the Crazy People Tent. They serve better beer over there anyways:P
Just because I believe I have personal evidence of God in my life doesn't mean I'm wanting to foist this belief on any of you guys/gals.
I consider the testable aspect of God to be love.
And I've seriously tried NOT to believe in God, but when I do that, I feel as though my air supply has been cut off. So I've resigned myself to being a creature with a undeniable God-instinct. If that makes me inferior to the rest of you, then so be it, but I can't any more say to myself that God doesn't exist than I can deny my own existence.
Call it a "hunch", then, but I feel as though I'm not just a pattern of dominos falling. I have a feeling that I have a Will of my own that acts outside of the natural, and can be used like a knife to pierce and shape the natural. I feel that life is alien, born with the clothing of this material universe, but containing within it a spark from a totally separate plane of reality.
Yeah, I'm crazy then. But I don't care. This is who I am. Just love people is the only sermon I think anyone can preach.
Mandrake was another distro that lost touch with its community (not to mention its original developers). Reminds me of another distro! I wonder if their fates will be similar.
This isn't a troll now, mind you... just a concern. SUSE's a great distro technically, but it seems that the Linux OSS community is gravitating more and more around Fedora (+ Red Hat & CentOS) and Debian (+ Ubuntu) distros these days....
I don't think just because I believe in it it's true.
I believe in it because I have seen evidence for it, but I can't pen this evidence down in a way that anyone can run mathematical proofs through it or reproduce an effect off a set of conditions.
Where's the evidence that we're more than just biological machines? Yet we still desire to live. Scientifically, though, life is just a highly complex form of death, and conciousness is basically a chemical-electrical reaction.
But I have faith in not treating myself, nor any other person, as merely a moist machine. I believe in the "I AM" within people.
And as a result, I feel as though God is at the center of my own existence. I believe I am alive, and that life isn't just an illusion created by a dance of many nonliving things.
Slashdot Mirror
I think operating systems will increasing become less and less of a concern for all of us, except for hardware scientists. Those of us more interested in applications care more about the platform, which I see over time being standardized in freedesktop.org, with various implementations or bindings in about every major "platform" interpreter/machine, be it C(++)/Kernel, the JVM, the CLR, or Mozilla. I also see all the major scripting languages having JVM and .NET ports one day.
In this article, the author is concerned about FUTURE progress of the Linux desktop, citing an imbalance in both the Gnome and KDE communities as cause for his concern:
1) Gnome: Plenty of money, few developers
2) KDE: Plenty of developers, little money
He also argues that because we're only seeing point releases from Gnome, progress there is slowing down, while in KDE, we no longer have significant point releases because everyone's focused on KDE 4, though there hasn't been any visual results yet out of the Plasma project.
In my opinion, this article is a lot of worry-worting. Sure, Gnome and KDE could *always* use more cash and developers, duh. But are the projects hitting some sort of dead end or breaking point where they'll cease to be effective? Hardly. Will they be able to surpass Vista and/or OSX in functionality? Depends on what you're looking for. Even now, some people prefer Windows, others OSX, and others Linux. Most people just put up with Windows, actually.
Thom is really into OS development, but I'm not sure how technical he is, so I think he may be more interested in what happens in the visual department. KDE 4 has little to show there, but a lot in the libraries that Plasma will sit on top of. I'm especially excited about Kross, which rivals MS's (as yet unreleased) Monad/Powershell.
What's unique about KDE4 (and why we really need it in addition to Gnome) is that it's going to be installable on Linux and BSD as well as Windows and OSX. That's pretty innovative if you ask me.
I don't think Plasma in KDE4 is going to bring about the radical changes some may be hoping for. There have been some interesting posts in discussion boards for both Gnome 3 (Topaz) and KDE4 for radical shifts, but usually these people are directed to look at Symphony OS, since most suggestions seem to revolve around creating a task-oriented desktop or else merging the desktop and browser into one environment.
All in all, I see nothing wrong with Gnome and KDE taking a more evolutionary approach. This is natural for any software so mature. The OSS kernels aren't going to see HUGE gains, just incremental improvements, but over the course of a year, you can see a lot of new innovations, just as you will with Gnome and KDE. An evolutionary approach to software development might not be as exciting for journalists and fans, but it sure makes more sense from a technical perspective: release early, small, and often.
Please understand that this is exactly what I'm saying.
Here's a good slice illustrating what I meant above:
h %2028:9-16&version=31;
http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Isaia
Hmm, I think your view of Christianity is skewed. That may be how the Christian religion at large works, but that's how every religion at large works.
... how it was in the beginning and finally by the end are very similar, and in the middle you have the Laws, but at the end you're told that this isn't how it was meant to be, but was merely a system to guide a large population in discovering grace.
The main point of the Bible is that it's not by our actions that we're saved, but by God's action. Read the Bible from beginning to end, and you can see how the religion evolved by God's will
You should really study the Bible and see for yourself on this. I'd think you'd find it is very non-religious, and just all about what a badass God is.
Yes, I think you're spot on about God.
As a Christian, the way I see it, God took all the action to save humanity in the manner he chose, namely, live on earth as a regular human and die in such the way he did. While on the cross, all the sin and evil of the world entered into him, and through this union he purified sin. This creates the bridge between God and man, and enables us to have fellowship and friendship with him.
What I don't agree with is the popular United States Christianity's exclusivity on the matter of Jesus, even though you can see prophetic imprints of this event in the subconsiouses of every culture on earth. To me, Christ is the Tao and the Buddha, and just plain everything! But he is more tangible than metaphysics; he's God in the flesh, which is very important because it shows God is real and God is the one who has taken the initiative to save humans -- not by our effort, our prayers and meditations, but by God's choice and action and sacrifice.
He doesn't need us, he just wants us. I think he wants to create a new "universe" full of God Jrs.
The God in the Bible isn't described as having immutable thoughts, though. Otherwise, isn't God just a bag of properties that respond robotically to various situations? I wouldn't call that a God.
Rather, I think God has a conscious will, meaning He can and does change his mind with respect to various situations.
At a much deeper level, however, perhaps at some core concept we can't define, I do think God is completely anchored. Love, perhaps, or something even beyond what we can encompass with a word.
I'll join your group :) Well, I'm already a member!
I'm a Christian, and love telling others about Christ and what he has done for humankind, but my evangelical zeal is not motivated by fear of Hell -- for myself or for others. Such motivation results in a spoiled message, I believe, because the Gospel is Good News, not Bad News, and telling someone they're going to Hell unless they do A, B, and C is news to most people.
I've read the Bible intensely, and from what I've gathered, God judges people based on whether they are "good" or "bad", a delineation no human can make, because only God truly knows how to separate light from darkness. So I leave all judgment up to him. God doesn't speak our language, even. "God" itself is a meaningless word. He is a force of Being, Life, Action, Will itself that causes life to shine in the dead universe against all odds.
My motivation to tell others about Christ is because it culminates my joy in life. My salvation is NOT because I
1) Confessed
2) Repented
3) Was Baptized
4) Stay faithful through prayer and scriptural meditation
but because GOD died! GOD was baptized in all the evil and sin that has ever been. He soaked the evil up as surely as bread dipped in wine. It entered him, became him, and he became it. And through this unity, he purified evil.
By believing these things, the entire world has been turned upside down for me. I am not saved because I pray, etc. I pray and do good because I am saved! When I do good, I know it is God confirming to me that He lives within me.
So, I try to judge a tree by its fruit. If I see good, I know it is God acting. I have seen God acting in atheists. For them, God is an implicit force.
God gave his blood for the earth, for all life and existence. Because of this, we Live.
However, one of the scientists went too far, and replaced every iron atom at the center of his porphyrin molecules with zinc, transforming him into Hydro Man -- but only when he went out into the sunlight.
God is evident to me and to other people.
I guess I should learn then to distinguish between things that are evident and the formal use of the word "evidence". I didn't mean to offend any discipline, such as science, that uses this word in its terminology. I can see now that I'm using it in a context that doesn't fit in with the rest of the dicussion.
I believe wood is a reincarnation of my cat fluffy, this is just as true a belief as any belief you have. I don't believe you really believe that.
So why should I be logical and follow the consensus of rational thinkers?
:P
9 75990/
Heheh, does not doing that make me a danger to society?
Good. I'm going to go blow myself up now
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=208114&cid=16
I guess I'm too old-fasioned, because I'm using the word "evidence" like "we hold these truths to be self-evident", you know, there's no data that proves all men are creating equal and whatnot. People back then were just more flexible with the word, and I haven't caught on yet.
Con-sarn it though, I'm not going to have you kids befuddling my verbiage. Now pop off while I go and have a gaye olde tyme with this here Java code.
You're right ... I don't have evidence that can be expressed as data that serves the purpose of proving God. Sure, I can decompose my experience into data, but none that will prove God in a scientific way.
:)
I don't think God should be taught in schools. In that context, there is no data or evidence.
Now, when I'm a grandpa here soon, I will tell my grandchildren about my life experience, and perhaps that will influence them to believe in God. But ultimately, whether they believe or not is something they totally do on their own. Predisposition to it, perhaps. Or a God-belief gene. But if there is such a thing as a God-belief gene, it would be kind of paradoxical to have one and yet not believe in God, like having code for black hair yet be born a blondy.
Heheh, hope this conversation has been interesting to you. No offense toward your way of life though. Just don't become president and take away my right to worship!
I don't really want to give myself credibility to you or anyone else by using a certain word. That wasn't my intention. Personal evidence is indeed not objective evidence.
But it's evidence to me. I've chosen to value my own instinct above the rational consensus for a few things, such as God.
If you understand that I'm not an evangelistic believer, then maybe you'll see where I'm coming from. I'm of the opinion that you can't really "convince" someone to believe in God -- they were going to either believe or not believe on their own, despite any fine words I may compose. If it's not totally on their own anyways, then I cast their belief into question.
So I don't want to discredit the evidence of a well-defined system that works: science. I respect science as a tool for understanding the processes of the Universe, and agree with the article that teachers shouldn't try to "convert" *cough* coerce *cough* impressionable kids into any sort of belief system that goes down core to the worldview.
I think people are just fooling themselves if they think they've adopted a fully objective reality, and I can't see the case for that being something to strife for. It does help mediate conflict when we all try to form rational consensus on truth using a well-defined set of rules (like science or logic), but at the same time, tolerance and love can mediate just as well, and leave us with a much more diverse and interesting planet to live on IMO. It's dangerous beauty, the irrational instinctual part of the human mind, but I feel more in touch with my nature when I believe in God: I'm happier, more creative, more at peace. Things with God make sense to me. God's just axiomatic to me.
:P
It could all be because of a gene for all I know: a God-gene. But still, this is my perception, this is me, and I feel no need to try and join the logical consensus on every major decision in my life.
I guess this is what faith feels like.
See you all -- I'm going over here to the Crazy People Tent. They serve better beer over there anyways
No, it's more like my whole life story, but I don't feel like going into that. You can read my generic reply to all these comments here: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=208114&cid=169 75990/
Just because I believe I have personal evidence of God in my life doesn't mean I'm wanting to foist this belief on any of you guys/gals.
I consider the testable aspect of God to be love.
And I've seriously tried NOT to believe in God, but when I do that, I feel as though my air supply has been cut off. So I've resigned myself to being a creature with a undeniable God-instinct. If that makes me inferior to the rest of you, then so be it, but I can't any more say to myself that God doesn't exist than I can deny my own existence.
Call it a "hunch", then, but I feel as though I'm not just a pattern of dominos falling. I have a feeling that I have a Will of my own that acts outside of the natural, and can be used like a knife to pierce and shape the natural. I feel that life is alien, born with the clothing of this material universe, but containing within it a spark from a totally separate plane of reality.
Yeah, I'm crazy then. But I don't care. This is who I am. Just love people is the only sermon I think anyone can preach.
Do you guys think life has a future?
Mandrake was another distro that lost touch with its community (not to mention its original developers). Reminds me of another distro! I wonder if their fates will be similar.
This isn't a troll now, mind you ... just a concern. SUSE's a great distro technically, but it seems that the Linux OSS community is gravitating more and more around Fedora (+ Red Hat & CentOS) and Debian (+ Ubuntu) distros these days ....
I don't think just because I believe in it it's true.
I believe in it because I have seen evidence for it, but I can't pen this evidence down in a way that anyone can run mathematical proofs through it or reproduce an effect off a set of conditions.
Ok, so it's counterexample ... I'm not sure what the rules are then, what am I suppose to say next?
Where's the evidence that we're more than just biological machines? Yet we still desire to live. Scientifically, though, life is just a highly complex form of death, and conciousness is basically a chemical-electrical reaction.
But I have faith in not treating myself, nor any other person, as merely a moist machine. I believe in the "I AM" within people.
And as a result, I feel as though God is at the center of my own existence. I believe I am alive, and that life isn't just an illusion created by a dance of many nonliving things.
Science isn't a belief system. But what is a belief is that science is the only form of truth.
I agree that skepticism is not a faith.
What is faith is this belief you hold:
- it is part of mature human nature.