With margins like that, and considering Intel's involvment with Linux, I wonder when the company will attempt to start a coup against MS.... Alas, probably when Windows upgrades don't involve upgrading CPUs as well.
QT has bindings to scripting languages, if you prefer those over C++.
I don't know where you get that C is faster than C++ to the extent that it matters for processors that will be running current-gen DE's anyways. C++ may be slower, but it's definitely led to QT being a very loosely coupled collection of tools, and thus a strong foundation for a great desktop, KDE.
QT is a great library for developers who want to target both Windows and Linux/UNIX desktops -- and companies can pay for the license to keep source hidden, if they like. Along with maybe Java SWT, QT probably has the greatest cross-platform desktop application viability for companies.
KDE is just a significant value-add for QT apps, allowing them to be highly integrated with their DE.
Moving and resizing Windows should be unneccessary. The window manager or DE should handle this for us, learning where we like our applications and what combinations we use them in.
I also think that the UNIX Way (tm) of doing applications (small, modular, and easily integrated) should be brought to the GUI level, so that our apps better communicate with one another, even to the point where you can hook multiple apps together into a single "app group".
Look, I believe the Bible, too, but I also believe science, which is simply a tool to understand the physical world. The Bible is definitely a tool to understand the spiritual world. A lot of people can tell you or me where we can stick our spiritual world, but heck -- that's their right as free-thinking creatures, and best of luck to them.
Now, don't discredit science or its foundation, math. The same patterns that run through the natural world run through the Bible. Take fractals, for instance. Jesus uses the illustration of fractals in the form of a tree and a branch to describe how we're all connected to God. Patterns run through the Old Testament as well in the form of foreshadowing archetypes of Christ, such as Moses (leads the Hebrews across the Red Sea to the Promised Land just as today Christ leads the Church across death into Heaven).
Evolution does not contradict the Bible. Science says that life was probably brought about by lightening, which in the Bible is often used to illustrate God's power -- think metaphorically. The book of Genesis says that God told the ~water~ and the ~land~ to produce living creatures -- he didn't produce them directly, he did it through a medium. He recreates the world through a medium as well: Christ.
As spiritual beings, we're told to evolve -- a pattern which once again parallels the physical world. Christ describes himself as the "Son of Man", not of a particular man, but of mankind: a conscious evolution of spirit.
God relays truth through word-pictures (visions in the Old Testament, parables in the New, etc.). These word pictures often come from nature. Don't think the Bible as a law-book -- the Word is Christ, not the pages of the book. It's a compass to point you to Truth, not a map to lay out truth for us like some sort of constitution of mathematical formula.
And by the way, if you take the Bible as completely literal, then you must believe according to Genesis that Satan is a physical snake.
Good luck, loosen up, take a breather, go for a walk in the woods or something.
And don't feel threatened so much by science. Some scientists will often try to draw metaphysical claims from science about exo-Universe origins and whatnot, but don't confuse such musings with science itself, which is neutral.
Then all those business entities running OpenOffice already will really be reaping the benefits, and TCO comparisons will be great. Organizations running Linux on the desktop will look to their Windows-running brethren sadly and say, "Told you so."
Eventually, we can relieve humans of producing creative works for the mass market because the process should be so rooted in statistical mediocrity and hence formulaic, that we just let rules-based systems generate "art" for the consumer.
But chances are that as soon as these big media companies think they've figured out the market, consumers who yesterday thought this factory-churned crap was cool will suddenly get really bored and start looking at what the unpopular people are doing, steal their ideas, and make it a trend -- as the cycle usually goes.
Right, I wasn't saying that the problem was Atos, just that the UK government is emphasizing closed source, despite what this study may say. Perhaps the study applies to just private UK business. In that case, I applaud the private sector, but I really pity the British government for locking themselves in to an offshore corporation (especially one like Microsoft) for years to come.
I currently work for a company that's being employed by Atos to supply the NHS with a J2EE solution. So what I want to know is why if the UK is so keen on open source, are we having to use nothing but AIX backend servers and Win32 web and app servers?
Because the NHS, like several other areas in UK government IT, are standardizing on Microsoft technologies (yeah, the AIX is IBM, but it's still closed as hell). That means thousands of hospitals and clinics (and other government entities) are locking themselves into Windows for another 10+ years right now!
I hear so many talk about tabbed browsing, popup-blocking, security, etc., but to me, the best feature of Firefox are the XUL extensions.
Mozilla should really start pushing XUL as an application platform more. Also, it'd be great to see a bit more standardization in how the extensions integrate into the browser and with each other, so you don't end up permanently mangaling your browser with a bad combination of extensions.
And I doubt IE will ever have AdBlock or StumbleUpon! Great stuff!
Very good point; I think then it becomes the responsibility of the large successful projects to help protect smaller projects -- OSDL seems to be doing this very thing, since it's the home of the Linux kernel.
The whole patent pool may be more of a political, anti-FUD measure then, rather than an actual strategic play against Microsoft launching a patent attack.
Oh, and as far as people believing in faeries or numbers or whatnot directing their lives -- well, I suppose those things may be Gods to those people, just as science may be a God to other people, or for people with various problems, things like money or sex or drugs or food may be Gods to them.
So I think I'd be a little biased in saying the only God (in my opinion) which would be worthy of being considered a God at all, would be the God that made everything and cares about everything.
Ok, sorry then that I assumed you were demeaning belief in God. I myself have actually been wrestling with this question personally for many years, though I have a great respect for science as well. As a result, I suppose I probably feel a bit defensive about the topic, since I have so much of my own identity wrapped up in it.
The existance of a God would have serious implications even in this world depending on the type of God. Outside the realm of science, I feel this powerful instinct that their ~is~ in fact a God, and a "good" God at that. What I mean by "good" though, I can't thoroughly explain either -- just simply that it's a being that takes a loving interest in me and in everyone else in the world/universe, like a parent involves themselves with their kids: terribly concerned about them, intervening in their lives, but at the same time, trying to get them to stand on their own two feet in the world.
So, understanding that this is the type of God I'm particularly talking about (since "God" really is quite a nebulous term that can mean almost anything, really) the implication would be that this God knows what we're thinking. God or no God, I'm pretty sure I'd have a respect for human life, but I wonder how seriously I would take my own thoughts about people (as opposed to just my external behaviors) if their was no God at all to take an interest in what I was thinking.
But if there ~is~ a God that knows the deep innermost parts of my personality, then I kind of gulp and fear what sort of impression it may have of me.
I would hope, though, that even if this God thing is far above and beyond me not just in intellect and power (whatever intelligence and power are -- and for that matter, who really cares) but also in its sheer ability to get into the skin of other people and really care about and understand individuals and our crazy interplay of thoughts, desires, actions, etc., that it could look at me and still just like me as a friend.
Strange notion of God, I think though -- just to have a hunch about a being that despite its great transendence just really wants to descend down to its underlings and have tea with them.
But even though I'm not a scientist myself, I can only imagine the personal impact thinking about this sort of stuff might have on a scientist and their motivations for science. I mean, after all, science just doesn't carry out itself -- there's always a person behind it, with real desires and motivations behind their inquiry.
So if I had to go with my gut feeling about the issue, I'd personally say there is a God, and I'm more or less friends with it. But I'd really hope this God thing doesn't blame all the other people in the world who don't have a similar gut feeling.
I guess the only real viable solution (which is what is happening anyways) is for open source to get so entrenched at the governmental level, that governments don't want to see it harmed, and also see it as enabling them to have power above US corporations (and though it can be bribed, even the US government at the highest levels wants to have more power over its IT than its own corporations, which open source allows).
So if I don't buy much, would I see fewer ads, since I'm interested in fewer products?
I don't watch TV, and mostly browse the internet for news and programming info. But I guess that if some database knows I go to Slashdot a lot, I'll just see lots of ads for computers all the time.
If there is a patent war, this will assure the dominance of China, India, Brazil, and Eastern Europe in both open source and software innovation in general.
A cynical part of me almost wants to see the West shoot itself in the foot with patents, but then I remind myself, "Oh wait, I live in the West."
The reason it's a valid question for scientists to ask, as opposed to asking whether invisible elephants exist, is that God's potential existence has far greater implications than unicorns, changing the way we perceive our own existence as well as our motivation for scientific study.
God is a far more mature topic of discussion than unicorns, and a remark like this is an ethnocentric insult to thousands of cultures around the world.
If a company is going to open source some code, why would they choose a BSD-style license? Well, that'd be if they're actually selling the code they're open sourcing.
But another aspect of open source is to have a pool of shared code, usually infrastructure-type stuff -- this is what the GPL is good for. In this case, a company's main product isn't this code -- this code just helps prop up their main product. Here is where the GPL shines in business: it enforces a "neutral zone" between companies, so that all infrastructural changes be open to everyone and uncooptable.
Ironically, the rise of this common infrastructure (mostly in the form of GNU/Linux and its related operating system software) probably wouldn't have happened had it not been for Microsoft. As they have spread and assimilated company after company, taking advantage of the real need for integation in the computer world, the only real way for the rest of the industry to stay competitive with them has been to pool resources.
The GPL just protects that treaty. But like I said, I suspect that it will only remain neccessary if either the GPL pool becomes a Microsoft-like force unto itself, or else Microsoft itself stays strong enough to require the GPL pool to counterbalance it.
At home, I use Ubuntu and Gentoo -- the former for fun, the latter for development. I've found that if I'm needing to find stuff and compile it, Gentoo is the most friendly distro. On Ubuntu, you have to first find out all the various dev packages you need to compile something, and it can be a real pain. Not so with Gentoo!
Gentoo is really only good in this respect, though. I also like it as a hobby system, and avoid software with really long compiles on it. So I say, if you're going to go Gentoo, avoid Gnome and KDE and go with something more in the Gentoo spirit, something like FVWM2 or OpenBox. You can pair it down and tweak it to be a real workbench OS, no frills.
There are many axioms in mathematical Set Theory which cause contridictions.
Logical discussion of God is a bit moot, anyway. If God were bound by logic, then "Logic" would be God.
If God is anything, it would be best described by models, and could not be described literally. The Universe is not much different, however, as our only logical way of describing and measuring the Universe is through math, which is itself only a model as well.
There are mathematical contridictions, and there are theological contridictions. Both are only models, however, and models can only show a facet of reality, not reality itself.
I'm not arguing that belief in God is logically superior to belief in no God. Just that the opposite is not superior, either.
The choice is up to the individual, and taken from an entirely rational perspective, it's completely an even-split choice.
All experimental evidence is interpreted through mathematical measurements. In set theory, there are many axioms which are the subject of much debate, though this is usually left to the math-philosophers.
There is no real difference logically in claiming either God or the Universe came first -- that either existed before time, where questions of origins and sequence become nonsensical. The only difference would be that God would have a self-will to act, whereas the Universe would have no will, but act nonetheless, perhaps as a result of some recursive Universe-spawning law.
I'm not arguing God is more logical a conclusion, just an equally valid conclusion as no God. Either works for science, and it's more convenient for scientists to get their job done without bringing up questions of God. However, it still is a valid questions for scientists to ask as they carry out their scientific work.
Neither would God have to physically exist, if it were the source of physics -- same with Universe, if that is the original substance.
Slashdot Mirror
Ubuntu takes a snapshot of Debian Unstable (the cutting edge Debian) and then stabilizes it. Ubuntu can only be compatible with Debian Unstable.
For instance, if Ubuntu was to be DCC-compliant, it would have to be using Gnome 2.8 instead of 2.12.
With margins like that, and considering Intel's involvment with Linux, I wonder when the company will attempt to start a coup against MS. ... Alas, probably when Windows upgrades don't involve upgrading CPUs as well.
QT has bindings to scripting languages, if you prefer those over C++.
I don't know where you get that C is faster than C++ to the extent that it matters for processors that will be running current-gen DE's anyways. C++ may be slower, but it's definitely led to QT being a very loosely coupled collection of tools, and thus a strong foundation for a great desktop, KDE.
QT is a great library for developers who want to target both Windows and Linux/UNIX desktops -- and companies can pay for the license to keep source hidden, if they like. Along with maybe Java SWT, QT probably has the greatest cross-platform desktop application viability for companies.
KDE is just a significant value-add for QT apps, allowing them to be highly integrated with their DE.
Moving and resizing Windows should be unneccessary. The window manager or DE should handle this for us, learning where we like our applications and what combinations we use them in.
I also think that the UNIX Way (tm) of doing applications (small, modular, and easily integrated) should be brought to the GUI level, so that our apps better communicate with one another, even to the point where you can hook multiple apps together into a single "app group".
Wow man ... wow, all I can say is wow.
Look, I believe the Bible, too, but I also believe science, which is simply a tool to understand the physical world. The Bible is definitely a tool to understand the spiritual world. A lot of people can tell you or me where we can stick our spiritual world, but heck -- that's their right as free-thinking creatures, and best of luck to them.
Now, don't discredit science or its foundation, math. The same patterns that run through the natural world run through the Bible. Take fractals, for instance. Jesus uses the illustration of fractals in the form of a tree and a branch to describe how we're all connected to God. Patterns run through the Old Testament as well in the form of foreshadowing archetypes of Christ, such as Moses (leads the Hebrews across the Red Sea to the Promised Land just as today Christ leads the Church across death into Heaven).
Evolution does not contradict the Bible. Science says that life was probably brought about by lightening, which in the Bible is often used to illustrate God's power -- think metaphorically. The book of Genesis says that God told the ~water~ and the ~land~ to produce living creatures -- he didn't produce them directly, he did it through a medium. He recreates the world through a medium as well: Christ.
As spiritual beings, we're told to evolve -- a pattern which once again parallels the physical world. Christ describes himself as the "Son of Man", not of a particular man, but of mankind: a conscious evolution of spirit.
God relays truth through word-pictures (visions in the Old Testament, parables in the New, etc.). These word pictures often come from nature. Don't think the Bible as a law-book -- the Word is Christ, not the pages of the book. It's a compass to point you to Truth, not a map to lay out truth for us like some sort of constitution of mathematical formula.
And by the way, if you take the Bible as completely literal, then you must believe according to Genesis that Satan is a physical snake.
Good luck, loosen up, take a breather, go for a walk in the woods or something.
And don't feel threatened so much by science. Some scientists will often try to draw metaphysical claims from science about exo-Universe origins and whatnot, but don't confuse such musings with science itself, which is neutral.
Then all those business entities running OpenOffice already will really be reaping the benefits, and TCO comparisons will be great. Organizations running Linux on the desktop will look to their Windows-running brethren sadly and say, "Told you so."
Eventually, we can relieve humans of producing creative works for the mass market because the process should be so rooted in statistical mediocrity and hence formulaic, that we just let rules-based systems generate "art" for the consumer. But chances are that as soon as these big media companies think they've figured out the market, consumers who yesterday thought this factory-churned crap was cool will suddenly get really bored and start looking at what the unpopular people are doing, steal their ideas, and make it a trend -- as the cycle usually goes.
Why couldn't the motto have been
"Be Good."
Right, I wasn't saying that the problem was Atos, just that the UK government is emphasizing closed source, despite what this study may say. Perhaps the study applies to just private UK business. In that case, I applaud the private sector, but I really pity the British government for locking themselves in to an offshore corporation (especially one like Microsoft) for years to come.
Well, they knighted Sir William, after all.
I currently work for a company that's being employed by Atos to supply the NHS with a J2EE solution. So what I want to know is why if the UK is so keen on open source, are we having to use nothing but AIX backend servers and Win32 web and app servers?
Because the NHS, like several other areas in UK government IT, are standardizing on Microsoft technologies (yeah, the AIX is IBM, but it's still closed as hell). That means thousands of hospitals and clinics (and other government entities) are locking themselves into Windows for another 10+ years right now!
I hear so many talk about tabbed browsing, popup-blocking, security, etc., but to me, the best feature of Firefox are the XUL extensions.
Mozilla should really start pushing XUL as an application platform more. Also, it'd be great to see a bit more standardization in how the extensions integrate into the browser and with each other, so you don't end up permanently mangaling your browser with a bad combination of extensions.
And I doubt IE will ever have AdBlock or StumbleUpon! Great stuff!
Very good point; I think then it becomes the responsibility of the large successful projects to help protect smaller projects -- OSDL seems to be doing this very thing, since it's the home of the Linux kernel. The whole patent pool may be more of a political, anti-FUD measure then, rather than an actual strategic play against Microsoft launching a patent attack.
Oh, and as far as people believing in faeries or numbers or whatnot directing their lives -- well, I suppose those things may be Gods to those people, just as science may be a God to other people, or for people with various problems, things like money or sex or drugs or food may be Gods to them. So I think I'd be a little biased in saying the only God (in my opinion) which would be worthy of being considered a God at all, would be the God that made everything and cares about everything.
Ok, sorry then that I assumed you were demeaning belief in God. I myself have actually been wrestling with this question personally for many years, though I have a great respect for science as well. As a result, I suppose I probably feel a bit defensive about the topic, since I have so much of my own identity wrapped up in it.
The existance of a God would have serious implications even in this world depending on the type of God. Outside the realm of science, I feel this powerful instinct that their ~is~ in fact a God, and a "good" God at that. What I mean by "good" though, I can't thoroughly explain either -- just simply that it's a being that takes a loving interest in me and in everyone else in the world/universe, like a parent involves themselves with their kids: terribly concerned about them, intervening in their lives, but at the same time, trying to get them to stand on their own two feet in the world.
So, understanding that this is the type of God I'm particularly talking about (since "God" really is quite a nebulous term that can mean almost anything, really) the implication would be that this God knows what we're thinking. God or no God, I'm pretty sure I'd have a respect for human life, but I wonder how seriously I would take my own thoughts about people (as opposed to just my external behaviors) if their was no God at all to take an interest in what I was thinking.
But if there ~is~ a God that knows the deep innermost parts of my personality, then I kind of gulp and fear what sort of impression it may have of me.
I would hope, though, that even if this God thing is far above and beyond me not just in intellect and power (whatever intelligence and power are -- and for that matter, who really cares) but also in its sheer ability to get into the skin of other people and really care about and understand individuals and our crazy interplay of thoughts, desires, actions, etc., that it could look at me and still just like me as a friend.
Strange notion of God, I think though -- just to have a hunch about a being that despite its great transendence just really wants to descend down to its underlings and have tea with them.
But even though I'm not a scientist myself, I can only imagine the personal impact thinking about this sort of stuff might have on a scientist and their motivations for science. I mean, after all, science just doesn't carry out itself -- there's always a person behind it, with real desires and motivations behind their inquiry.
So if I had to go with my gut feeling about the issue, I'd personally say there is a God, and I'm more or less friends with it. But I'd really hope this God thing doesn't blame all the other people in the world who don't have a similar gut feeling.
I guess the only real viable solution (which is what is happening anyways) is for open source to get so entrenched at the governmental level, that governments don't want to see it harmed, and also see it as enabling them to have power above US corporations (and though it can be bribed, even the US government at the highest levels wants to have more power over its IT than its own corporations, which open source allows).
I guess I didn't notice ... what kind of things are happening?
So if I don't buy much, would I see fewer ads, since I'm interested in fewer products?
I don't watch TV, and mostly browse the internet for news and programming info. But I guess that if some database knows I go to Slashdot a lot, I'll just see lots of ads for computers all the time.
If there is a patent war, this will assure the dominance of China, India, Brazil, and Eastern Europe in both open source and software innovation in general.
A cynical part of me almost wants to see the West shoot itself in the foot with patents, but then I remind myself, "Oh wait, I live in the West."
The reason it's a valid question for scientists to ask, as opposed to asking whether invisible elephants exist, is that God's potential existence has far greater implications than unicorns, changing the way we perceive our own existence as well as our motivation for scientific study.
God is a far more mature topic of discussion than unicorns, and a remark like this is an ethnocentric insult to thousands of cultures around the world.
If a company is going to open source some code, why would they choose a BSD-style license? Well, that'd be if they're actually selling the code they're open sourcing.
But another aspect of open source is to have a pool of shared code, usually infrastructure-type stuff -- this is what the GPL is good for. In this case, a company's main product isn't this code -- this code just helps prop up their main product. Here is where the GPL shines in business: it enforces a "neutral zone" between companies, so that all infrastructural changes be open to everyone and uncooptable.
Ironically, the rise of this common infrastructure (mostly in the form of GNU/Linux and its related operating system software) probably wouldn't have happened had it not been for Microsoft. As they have spread and assimilated company after company, taking advantage of the real need for integation in the computer world, the only real way for the rest of the industry to stay competitive with them has been to pool resources.
The GPL just protects that treaty. But like I said, I suspect that it will only remain neccessary if either the GPL pool becomes a Microsoft-like force unto itself, or else Microsoft itself stays strong enough to require the GPL pool to counterbalance it.
A long-haired smelly just shed a tear.
At home, I use Ubuntu and Gentoo -- the former for fun, the latter for development. I've found that if I'm needing to find stuff and compile it, Gentoo is the most friendly distro. On Ubuntu, you have to first find out all the various dev packages you need to compile something, and it can be a real pain. Not so with Gentoo!
Gentoo is really only good in this respect, though. I also like it as a hobby system, and avoid software with really long compiles on it. So I say, if you're going to go Gentoo, avoid Gnome and KDE and go with something more in the Gentoo spirit, something like FVWM2 or OpenBox. You can pair it down and tweak it to be a real workbench OS, no frills.
There are many axioms in mathematical Set Theory which cause contridictions.
Logical discussion of God is a bit moot, anyway. If God were bound by logic, then "Logic" would be God.
If God is anything, it would be best described by models, and could not be described literally. The Universe is not much different, however, as our only logical way of describing and measuring the Universe is through math, which is itself only a model as well.
There are mathematical contridictions, and there are theological contridictions. Both are only models, however, and models can only show a facet of reality, not reality itself.
I'm not arguing that belief in God is logically superior to belief in no God. Just that the opposite is not superior, either.
The choice is up to the individual, and taken from an entirely rational perspective, it's completely an even-split choice.
All experimental evidence is interpreted through mathematical measurements. In set theory, there are many axioms which are the subject of much debate, though this is usually left to the math-philosophers.
There is no real difference logically in claiming either God or the Universe came first -- that either existed before time, where questions of origins and sequence become nonsensical. The only difference would be that God would have a self-will to act, whereas the Universe would have no will, but act nonetheless, perhaps as a result of some recursive Universe-spawning law.
I'm not arguing God is more logical a conclusion, just an equally valid conclusion as no God. Either works for science, and it's more convenient for scientists to get their job done without bringing up questions of God. However, it still is a valid questions for scientists to ask as they carry out their scientific work.
Neither would God have to physically exist, if it were the source of physics -- same with Universe, if that is the original substance.
Yeah, this'll sure help the space debris problem.
A few satellites get blown up, and nothing's going to make it through that cloud of dirt.
But it may be for the best.