I suspect that most people who have trouble getting the features they need into open source projects are trying bribery not with money/pizza/Mountain Dew, but with offers of nerd lovin', and that usually has the opposite effect...
Yes, you are absolutely right that memory leaks and pointer problems in C suck, and that dealing with them is a colossal waste of time. And Java's garbage collection is, in some ways, better than Perl's.
However, Java is neither the only, nor the first, nor the best language to offer garbage collection and runtime safety. Java's type system sucks, its implementation of generics is awful, its native code interface is slow and cumbersome, its libraries are bloated and saddled by backwards compatibility issues, and the platform is being designed by huge committees of self-appointed experts.
Do yourself a favor and use some other language. There are many choices; my personal favorites are Python, C#, and OCaml.
They can't do that from a practical point of view. First, Mass mandates the use of open document formats, not the use of OOo. Second, document files are less and less things that people just save, they go into document management systems; those systems are going to use open document formats, not DOC, in Mass.
Nice, and congratulations on that. However, that's not something anybody can really rely on: Microsoft can assert patent claims at any moment, and they can just switch to a different CODEC.
In the short-term, reverse engineered protocols may help attract some users who don't know any better, but in the long term, a well-engineered open source chat solution based on an open IM infrastructure is more important.
About the only thing I've really noticed is that they're America-centric
Yes, nationalist populism is a common feature of right-wing and extreme right-wing parties and organizations. That's why many of those parties are called "National" something or other, both historically and today.
I guess the reason this isn't more obvious to many Americans is because even the so-called left does it in the US.
-- Eighty percent of Fox viewers were found to hold at least one misperception, compared to 23 percent of NPR/PBS consumers.
-- Here's one, a study by Stanford and UCLA saying Fox News Special Report is the most centrist news program [gmu.edu] on television
Are they contradictory? Not at all: they tell you that the political center in the US is badly misinformed. And given that the "political center" is defined in those studies as a kind of average of the positions of think tanks, that's not surprising: the right side of the political spectrum has been using think tanks very effectively for shifting political debate to the right by advocating hare brained solutions that then make slightly less right wing proposals look moderate in comparison.
Economically, this makes a lot of sense for the US. It's also a nice deal for the many budding scientists and engineers around the world.
But one has to ask: if the US sucks up many of the smartest, most rational people in the world, how are nations like China, Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan ever going to advance politically? They need an educated middle class, because it's the educated middle class, not the wealthy and not the blue collar workers, that drives nations towards democracy and freedom.
The best thing the US can do to fight terrorism and totalitarian regimes in the world is to educate people from around the world and then send them back. Of course, realistically, that's not going to happen.
Excuse me, but that's just plain ignorance. I know of a hell lot of people who really hate windows and would love to switch over to Linux, but it's the little things like these that hold them back.
MSN video chat won't get ported to Linux for the simple reason that it's a Microsoft-proprietary system. If people can't deal with that, that's too bad; they should stay on Windows.
Incidentally, it works both ways: my favorite software isn't available on Windows. In fact, I find Windows kind of a wasteland in terms of software: lots of crappy shareware apps, a few decent but overpriced commercial stuff, and then Microsoft monopoly-ware. Thanks, but no thanks.
Modern Linux distributions come with all applications Grandma would ever want to use preinstalled. So, all she does is click on the "Instant Messenger" icon. See, that's even easier than Windows.
Secondly, what makes you think microsoft could possibly compete with Photoshop? They have very little experience in professional imaging.
Microsoft doesn't have a lot of experience in the market, that's true; but when has that ever stopped them? In terms of technology and user interfaces, I guarantee you that Microsoft has more and smarter people than Adobe.
By observing hundreds of users over more than a decade. Most of them had little computer experience, and just wanted to edit photos. Very few had any difficulties.
We don't need an IPTV "platform"; standard video codecs, RSS, and (optionally) torrent are sufficient. The software needed for that is widely available and in open source form.
The only thing that's left to be done is to give it a simple user interface for publishing and for subscribing. On the server side, content management systems like Mambo, Drupal, and Broadcastmachine make publishing easy. On the client side, systems like Videora and DTV address the problem.
Microsoft is late to the party, as usual. However, their usual approach of buying up everything and making it proprietary won't work anymore.
Gimp, CinePaint, and friends are the equivalent of PhotoShop in the open source world. The space of applications like iPhoto--browsing and simple correction--is covered by programs like Nautilus, Konqueror, F-Spot, Kimdaba, GQView, and many others.
Gimp's interface takes a lot of getting used to
Gimp's interface is a pretty standard Gnome application, with a few floating toolbars. I suppose one should eventually make those toolbars dockable, just so that people like you stop complaining, but there is nothing wrong with the interface.
But people like to roll it out as an example of why Open Source 'has the apps' too, and it's really a good example of why Open Source apps just don't compare for normal users.
Only in your uninformed world view. In real life, open source covers those needs better: something like KDE or Gnome is far better integrated and consistent than any solution for Windows I have seen, and pretty much the equivalent of iPhoto.
WTF? photoshop is popular in part because it is one of the most usable products on the planet.
Photoshop is popular because it was the first photo editing application for Windows and Microsoft (uncharacteristically) hasn't competed with them yet.
You can be a beginner or an expert, and it is still easy to use.
And you established this incredible fact how exactly?
All tools add value to the Linux desktop, but if it's not user-friendly none of that matters.
That's just not true. There are a lot of powerful tools that are not "user-friendly", but they are exactly the sort of thing that professionals use for their work (e.g., "Photoshop"). Usability is only one of many factors determining the importance and the popularity of an application.
But let's keep things in perspective -- although Xara is quite "neat", it's not going to attract legions of people to Linux all of a sudden.
But the more apps there are, the more believable Linux becomes as a desktop platform.
They aren't trivial under other operating systems either: installing a scanner, digicam, or a video camera is beyond what most people can do on Windows or Macintosh. (Well, iSight perhaps being the exception, simply because the software is effectively preinstalled.)
I have a lot of old, professionally scanned slide film (mostly Velvia) taken with high quality primes, and even a 6 MPixel DSLR yields much better results than that.
12 MPixel is roughly what you can get in terms of resolution if you do absolutely everything right with film. In real life, it's usually impossible to do everything right, and even if you do, you still end up with worse images from film because quality depends on a lot more factors than resolution.
Making up one's mind is your duty, not theirs. See, the way it works, these companies offer you all these different ways in which you can buy something, and you decide which one makes sense for you.
Comcast's offer makes a lot more sense than many other business models; I think I'll give it a try.
If Congress doesn't deliver a Broadcast Flag pronto, warns the letter, content producers will abandon free, over-the-air broadcast TV.
Obviously, that means that we should, under no circumstances, deliver a Broadcast Flag; we really need the bandwidth for more useful purposes. For example, if we use those channels for WiFi or WiMax, then Internet access becomes easier and people can choose what to watch, as opposed to having ABC and NBC show them bad television with worse advertising mixed in.
Most of these companies employees are not doing anything productive as they are a bunch of lawyers on staff who are parasites on technology and innovation doing nothing but sucking the life out innovation and progress.
That's because if you are a company making an actual product, there is no way in hell you can get anything for your patent from competitors: your competitors will have a huge patent portfolio, and they are going to sue you for patent violation unless you cross-license.
IP-only companies like these are salvation for the patent system: if they succeed, sooner or later, companies like Microsoft, Apple, and IBM will tire of getting sued and they'll work for patent reform.
And those IP-only companies often get their patents by paying some inventor or company good money for the patent itself.
Slashdot Mirror
Isn't this just eInk technology repackaged by Siemens?
I suspect that most people who have trouble getting the features they need into open source projects are trying bribery not with money/pizza/Mountain Dew, but with offers of nerd lovin', and that usually has the opposite effect...
Yes, you are absolutely right that memory leaks and pointer problems in C suck, and that dealing with them is a colossal waste of time. And Java's garbage collection is, in some ways, better than Perl's.
However, Java is neither the only, nor the first, nor the best language to offer garbage collection and runtime safety. Java's type system sucks, its implementation of generics is awful, its native code interface is slow and cumbersome, its libraries are bloated and saddled by backwards compatibility issues, and the platform is being designed by huge committees of self-appointed experts.
Do yourself a favor and use some other language. There are many choices; my personal favorites are Python, C#, and OCaml.
They can't do that from a practical point of view. First, Mass mandates the use of open document formats, not the use of OOo. Second, document files are less and less things that people just save, they go into document management systems; those systems are going to use open document formats, not DOC, in Mass.
Nice, and congratulations on that. However, that's not something anybody can really rely on: Microsoft can assert patent claims at any moment, and they can just switch to a different CODEC.
In the short-term, reverse engineered protocols may help attract some users who don't know any better, but in the long term, a well-engineered open source chat solution based on an open IM infrastructure is more important.
About the only thing I've really noticed is that they're America-centric
Yes, nationalist populism is a common feature of right-wing and extreme right-wing parties and organizations. That's why many of those parties are called "National" something or other, both historically and today.
I guess the reason this isn't more obvious to many Americans is because even the so-called left does it in the US.
Well, let's take these two observations:
-- Eighty percent of Fox viewers were found to hold at least one misperception, compared to 23 percent of NPR/PBS consumers.
-- Here's one, a study by Stanford and UCLA saying Fox News Special Report is the most centrist news program [gmu.edu] on television
Are they contradictory? Not at all: they tell you that the political center in the US is badly misinformed. And given that the "political center" is defined in those studies as a kind of average of the positions of think tanks, that's not surprising: the right side of the political spectrum has been using think tanks very effectively for shifting political debate to the right by advocating hare brained solutions that then make slightly less right wing proposals look moderate in comparison.
Economically, this makes a lot of sense for the US. It's also a nice deal for the many budding scientists and engineers around the world.
But one has to ask: if the US sucks up many of the smartest, most rational people in the world, how are nations like China, Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan ever going to advance politically? They need an educated middle class, because it's the educated middle class, not the wealthy and not the blue collar workers, that drives nations towards democracy and freedom.
The best thing the US can do to fight terrorism and totalitarian regimes in the world is to educate people from around the world and then send them back. Of course, realistically, that's not going to happen.
Excuse me, but that's just plain ignorance. I know of a hell lot of people who really hate windows and would love to switch over to Linux, but it's the little things like these that hold them back.
MSN video chat won't get ported to Linux for the simple reason that it's a Microsoft-proprietary system. If people can't deal with that, that's too bad; they should stay on Windows.
Incidentally, it works both ways: my favorite software isn't available on Windows. In fact, I find Windows kind of a wasteland in terms of software: lots of crappy shareware apps, a few decent but overpriced commercial stuff, and then Microsoft monopoly-ware. Thanks, but no thanks.
Modern Linux distributions come with all applications Grandma would ever want to use preinstalled. So, all she does is click on the "Instant Messenger" icon. See, that's even easier than Windows.
This is exactly why Linux is not a real threat to Windows.
Whatever you say.
With Windows, you can download an installation file and know it'll install on any Windows box without any problem.
You just go on believing that (must be good stuff you're on).
Secondly, what makes you think microsoft could possibly compete with Photoshop? They have very little experience in professional imaging.
Microsoft doesn't have a lot of experience in the market, that's true; but when has that ever stopped them? In terms of technology and user interfaces, I guarantee you that Microsoft has more and smarter people than Adobe.
By observing hundreds of users over more than a decade. Most of them had little computer experience, and just wanted to edit photos. Very few had any difficulties.
Go look up "observer bias".
We don't need an IPTV "platform"; standard video codecs, RSS, and (optionally) torrent are sufficient. The software needed for that is widely available and in open source form.
The only thing that's left to be done is to give it a simple user interface for publishing and for subscribing. On the server side, content management systems like Mambo, Drupal, and Broadcastmachine make publishing easy. On the client side, systems like Videora and DTV address the problem.
Microsoft is late to the party, as usual. However, their usual approach of buying up everything and making it proprietary won't work anymore.
In addition to the computer being up and running, now, some weird driver and USB dongle needs to be installed and working, too.
I'd buy a WiFi-Skype handset, preferably one that I can use at public access points as well, but this thing makes no sense to me.
Gimp, CinePaint, and friends are the equivalent of PhotoShop in the open source world. The space of applications like iPhoto--browsing and simple correction--is covered by programs like Nautilus, Konqueror, F-Spot, Kimdaba, GQView, and many others.
Gimp's interface takes a lot of getting used to
Gimp's interface is a pretty standard Gnome application, with a few floating toolbars. I suppose one should eventually make those toolbars dockable, just so that people like you stop complaining, but there is nothing wrong with the interface.
But people like to roll it out as an example of why Open Source 'has the apps' too, and it's really a good example of why Open Source apps just don't compare for normal users.
Only in your uninformed world view. In real life, open source covers those needs better: something like KDE or Gnome is far better integrated and consistent than any solution for Windows I have seen, and pretty much the equivalent of iPhoto.
WTF? photoshop is popular in part because it is one of the most usable products on the planet.
Photoshop is popular because it was the first photo editing application for Windows and Microsoft (uncharacteristically) hasn't competed with them yet.
You can be a beginner or an expert, and it is still easy to use.
And you established this incredible fact how exactly?
All tools add value to the Linux desktop, but if it's not user-friendly none of that matters.
That's just not true. There are a lot of powerful tools that are not "user-friendly", but they are exactly the sort of thing that professionals use for their work (e.g., "Photoshop"). Usability is only one of many factors determining the importance and the popularity of an application.
But let's keep things in perspective -- although Xara is quite "neat", it's not going to attract legions of people to Linux all of a sudden.
But the more apps there are, the more believable Linux becomes as a desktop platform.
They aren't trivial under other operating systems either: installing a scanner, digicam, or a video camera is beyond what most people can do on Windows or Macintosh. (Well, iSight perhaps being the exception, simply because the software is effectively preinstalled.)
The Canon 50/1.8 is a bargain at $75; of course, you're not gonna get a sturdy lens at that price, but optically, it is very good.
The closest that Olympus has is the 35/3.5 for about $230, and with those specs, of course, it's going to be constructed better.
I have a lot of old, professionally scanned slide film (mostly Velvia) taken with high quality primes, and even a 6 MPixel DSLR yields much better results than that.
12 MPixel is roughly what you can get in terms of resolution if you do absolutely everything right with film. In real life, it's usually impossible to do everything right, and even if you do, you still end up with worse images from film because quality depends on a lot more factors than resolution.
Making up one's mind is your duty, not theirs. See, the way it works, these companies offer you all these different ways in which you can buy something, and you decide which one makes sense for you.
Comcast's offer makes a lot more sense than many other business models; I think I'll give it a try.
If Congress doesn't deliver a Broadcast Flag pronto, warns the letter, content producers will abandon free, over-the-air broadcast TV.
Obviously, that means that we should, under no circumstances, deliver a Broadcast Flag; we really need the bandwidth for more useful purposes. For example, if we use those channels for WiFi or WiMax, then Internet access becomes easier and people can choose what to watch, as opposed to having ABC and NBC show them bad television with worse advertising mixed in.
film is very sensitive to moisture and extreme temperatures. (It's also noisier, has lower resolution, and has lower ISO than modern digital sensors.)
The new regiment will allow per-processor licensing to be handled based on the number of virtual processors
Microsoft is so generous to us.
Most of these companies employees are not doing anything productive as they are a bunch of lawyers on staff who are parasites on technology and innovation doing nothing but sucking the life out innovation and progress.
That's because if you are a company making an actual product, there is no way in hell you can get anything for your patent from competitors: your competitors will have a huge patent portfolio, and they are going to sue you for patent violation unless you cross-license.
IP-only companies like these are salvation for the patent system: if they succeed, sooner or later, companies like Microsoft, Apple, and IBM will tire of getting sued and they'll work for patent reform.
And those IP-only companies often get their patents by paying some inventor or company good money for the patent itself.