That's not really the point though — as much as people can gain from this, the fixed costs are still a hindrance for a lot of people. In a lot of cases, the biggest thing that "major labels" can offer is serious cash investment. The initial outlay can just be too much for some. It's regrettable, but it is the case. There's a good few attempts at working around it though; some friends of mine are holding a "webathon" in order to obtain the funds needed to produce their own album, because they refuse to join a major label when the cost would be to change their music.
I suppose this is where the "next generation" of labels would step in and provide funding for new acts from previous profits. I think the ball has already started rolling in this regard. I'm just trying to put forward that it is still very difficult for artists despite the advent of technology helping them out.
Ehh.. What are you talking about ? I am running 10.1 right now and have KDE desktop.
OpenSuSE, or the Enterprise one that the article is about? The new Enterprise one uses a more GNOME-centric system in general, it seems. I've no doubt that KDE is still an option, though.
Isn't that more of a demonstration of Compiz, more than XGL? XGL just running Metacity or whatever looks much the same, if a little rougher around the edges.
As much fun as comparing chalk to cheese is, some people prefer an equation editor where one does not have to learn a text syntax to use it, and some people prefer the efficiency of writing out in that text format. Parading one as "superior" to the other is an exercise in futility.
If you can do both in OOo (although I have OOo, I've never used the equation editor, preferring LaTeX, so I've no idea), that's a pretty neat feature. It's not a particularly huge one though, and not one which is particularly good for comparing the packages in general.
One does have to take into account the costs of creating the music though. While the internet is cutting down on the overheads of distribution (which is killing a monopoly held by major labels, which is a good thing), the costs of music production (and, if the artists are full-time, enough profit to support them) need to be taken into account too. Spending $500-1000 on production of a track (I'm fairly sure these are not infeasible numbers for a reasonably well-produced track) would automatically mean that it needs to sell 5,000-10,000 copies just in order to cover overheads. This means publicity, which is more overhead. I'd rather not see the internet turn into another marketplace where artists with less circulation can be killed off.
The bottom line is that the internet can effectively free independent artists from their distribution costs. What we need now is the technology (and cheaper home studio equipment is beginning to provide this) to free them from other costs.
Releasing source code causes more efficient product improvement & feature development, when the user base is above a certain threshold.
I mean what reason that they don't have now? If the EU removes their IP ownership, their internal documentation and source becomes more valuable to them as a means for profit since they'd have a competitive advantage over other companies for Windows support contracts.
Actually, getting rid of a large number of patents and moving a large amount of works, which have a lot of commercial use and value, into the public domain would likely help, not hurt, the economy of both US and EU.
And breaking international treaties on copyrights while you're at it? I'm no fan of software patents, but it's important to note that the EU does not currently have software patents, so this is solely a matter of copyright. I personally believe that Microsoft's software should not be in the public domain as yet. They still make a reasonable profit from it, and it's generally pretty new.
Software patents are a bad idea though, yes.
Microsoft products themselves could be substantially improved if the source code was available and could be used.
What incentive would Microsoft have to release their source code if the EU stopped respecting their IP?
And of course getting rid of patents always helps economy, since it allows improved offerings from 3rd parties and thus encourages competition.
Actually, some patents (apparently) do help the economy. Software is essentially a special case. And since the EU does not have software patents, this is not relevant here.
I don't think that completely invalidating a reasonably-universal law which is bound by several internation treaties and so forth for a single case would be "easy", or sensible in the slightest. It would have the effect of prohibiting the company from operating, but another (just as sensible) way to do that would be to seize all of Microsoft's assets. Or kill their board of directors.
Love them or loathe them, using IP laws in a single case to leverage someone would be stupid on a level rarely before seen by man. It wouldn't be fair, it would set a ridiculous precedent, it would break down relations with other countries, it would fuck over the economy, and it would cast many other businesses' assets into doubt.
I personally believe that IP laws should be reformed in some ways, and prevented from further measures attempting to make them stricter (DMCA and so on). Showing that the government (or a consortium of governments, of all things) is willing to simply sidestep a law which is of utmost importance in modern life when it feels like it would undermine all of the efforts to reform the law and many of the things which rely upon this law.
That's also why I am a little surprised that Ubuntu's source code isn't up on their download page, there isn't even a link to it.
Ubuntu is a Linux distribution. The source to the packages is available in the same place as the packages themselves. Because of the way APT works, it doesn't make sense to have a monolithic source download for that sort of thing. You can download the source via the package manager.
Most of the time you just want a clean slate, and don't want an OS loaded with all sorts of Free ISP offers and annoying desktop icons that you don't need. You want to stick to what you know.
Where "you" is an expert user, who is in the minority. The majority of actual users, when they "reset" their system, want it back the way it came, and that's what this gives you.
I realise that a lot of these things bug the hell out of those of us that don't use these inane "tools" that come with OEM systems (and really, how hard could it be to just make them optional?), but we need to realise that we are not the majority, and our desires are not an exact match with those which work best for the majority. Unfortunately.
Secondly, one has to question the sense of sticking the valuable code on the SIDE of the computer. Just what purpose did this serve?
I always wondered about that personally. I guess it stops you losing it? It certainly makes tying it to the proprietary install media make sense. What would be nice would be if it was possible to get the vendor's specific install media from them (even has an ISO download) if you prove that you're an owner of one of their systems.
That's not the issue though — the issue was that there's just a stigma around Java now because it was slow in the past (due to a less refined implementation) and because its desktop APIs are generally terrible so desktop apps written in Java tend to be clunky and slow. If you used Java apps a while ago, or Java desktop apps, to gain your opinion of it being slow, you're damned right. But Java itself is not slow.
My cynical suspicion is that the whole "Java is slow" mentality, coupled with the whole "let the language do all the nasty stuff for me and protect me from myself" mentality has led to a whole generation of lazy programmers who won't spend the time to optimize their code, instead choosing to blame the language.
I'm always surprised with how much weight people put on optimisation. Generally I find that a few days with a profiler will find any serious bottlenecks, and otherwise a well-written system will be fairly performant anyway. Over-optimisation is as dangerous as anything else, and rarely yields positive results.
C's crudeness often forced you to write good code or crash....
"Good" code is subjective in this context — I've seen a lot of incredibly poorly-written C code which is that way just because "it didn't work" and was hacked until it did. While its true that generally it's easier to get going with a language like Java (well, other than the verbose nature of the OO implementation), I don't think that this "lower entry requirement" leads to poorer code in general. That's just my positive view though, I realise that a great number of PHP apps are evidence to the contrary here;).
But yes, Java ends up being slow in desktop apps, a lot of the time. In general, however, as Java implementations get better, even older apps will improve with it.
Java's performance isn't "poor" — as is frequently pointed out on this site, this is largely an outdated myth. As for not truly open source, it's a definate issue, yes, although there is open implementations.
Yeah. I think GNOME is set up better as a functional system, whereas KDE is much more for the discerning tweaker, in a lot of ways. I've spent ages customising GNOME before, and always ended up back where I started because it works well as it's initially configured. Ah well.
GNOME's interface supports every feature that I'm ever likely to need, I find that KDE does a lot of stuff all at once and it ends up confused and aimless. Thanks to your interference I've just installed KDE in order to give it a second (actually something like eighth, but let's not split hairs) chance though:)
I use GNOME, and it does much the same thing. As neat as KDE's features are, I find it clunky and difficult to use as a whole. Could just be me though!
Why would you WANT documents pushing each other out of the way? That just means that, if I have something exactly where I want it, and I happen to want to move something in a direct path blocked by the other document, that means I either have to move AROUND the second document, or push it out of the way, and then go back and move it again. This is simply one of many such problems with a "phsycial" interface.
If not overdone, it could be more intuitive. If icons are constantly in your way, that's an immediate incentive to organise them better. Current UIs frequently don't reflect the problems with lack of organisation until it's too late.
My biggest gripe with this, however, is the fact that the icons all look the same. I don't want to have to memorize the placement of documents on my desktop (even though I often do so through simple habit, anyway), and these icons barely indictate file type, much less name, which I find to be a huge handicap. Without file names on the desktop, things get confusing rather quickly.
I agree with this. Using a thumbnail of documents would effectively fix this problem though, plus potentially make transitions to editing them more natural.
A final gripe I have is that, if we must use a pen-type device, does that mean we're switching from a pen to a mouse whenever we want to use an application that's incompatable/inconvenient when using this software?
I doubt that this software is designed to interoperate with systems that don't support using a pen at all. I expect it's designed to be used on devices entirely controlled by pen. Most pen gestures are fairly equivalent to mouse operations in any case.
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That's not really the point though — as much as people can gain from this, the fixed costs are still a hindrance for a lot of people. In a lot of cases, the biggest thing that "major labels" can offer is serious cash investment. The initial outlay can just be too much for some. It's regrettable, but it is the case. There's a good few attempts at working around it though; some friends of mine are holding a "webathon" in order to obtain the funds needed to produce their own album, because they refuse to join a major label when the cost would be to change their music.
I suppose this is where the "next generation" of labels would step in and provide funding for new acts from previous profits. I think the ball has already started rolling in this regard. I'm just trying to put forward that it is still very difficult for artists despite the advent of technology helping them out.
My name is not Luke, incidentally :).
OpenSuSE, or the Enterprise one that the article is about? The new Enterprise one uses a more GNOME-centric system in general, it seems. I've no doubt that KDE is still an option, though.
Isn't that more of a demonstration of Compiz, more than XGL? XGL just running Metacity or whatever looks much the same, if a little rougher around the edges.
Ah, nice. Cheers for the information. :)
Neat. I'll check that out when I get home possibly maybe perhaps (we use Office here at my work).
Well, yes, but I'm not sure it's something you should use to judge the whole system, especially since for most users it's a pretty minor feature.
As much fun as comparing chalk to cheese is, some people prefer an equation editor where one does not have to learn a text syntax to use it, and some people prefer the efficiency of writing out in that text format. Parading one as "superior" to the other is an exercise in futility.
If you can do both in OOo (although I have OOo, I've never used the equation editor, preferring LaTeX, so I've no idea), that's a pretty neat feature. It's not a particularly huge one though, and not one which is particularly good for comparing the packages in general.
There's a serious school of thought which declares that source is documentation enough for a system. It'd be funny if it weren't so tragic.
One does have to take into account the costs of creating the music though. While the internet is cutting down on the overheads of distribution (which is killing a monopoly held by major labels, which is a good thing), the costs of music production (and, if the artists are full-time, enough profit to support them) need to be taken into account too. Spending $500-1000 on production of a track (I'm fairly sure these are not infeasible numbers for a reasonably well-produced track) would automatically mean that it needs to sell 5,000-10,000 copies just in order to cover overheads. This means publicity, which is more overhead. I'd rather not see the internet turn into another marketplace where artists with less circulation can be killed off.
The bottom line is that the internet can effectively free independent artists from their distribution costs. What we need now is the technology (and cheaper home studio equipment is beginning to provide this) to free them from other costs.
I mean what reason that they don't have now? If the EU removes their IP ownership, their internal documentation and source becomes more valuable to them as a means for profit since they'd have a competitive advantage over other companies for Windows support contracts.
And breaking international treaties on copyrights while you're at it? I'm no fan of software patents, but it's important to note that the EU does not currently have software patents, so this is solely a matter of copyright. I personally believe that Microsoft's software should not be in the public domain as yet. They still make a reasonable profit from it, and it's generally pretty new.
Software patents are a bad idea though, yes.
What incentive would Microsoft have to release their source code if the EU stopped respecting their IP?
Actually, some patents (apparently) do help the economy. Software is essentially a special case. And since the EU does not have software patents, this is not relevant here.
I don't think that completely invalidating a reasonably-universal law which is bound by several internation treaties and so forth for a single case would be "easy", or sensible in the slightest. It would have the effect of prohibiting the company from operating, but another (just as sensible) way to do that would be to seize all of Microsoft's assets. Or kill their board of directors.
Love them or loathe them, using IP laws in a single case to leverage someone would be stupid on a level rarely before seen by man. It wouldn't be fair, it would set a ridiculous precedent, it would break down relations with other countries, it would fuck over the economy, and it would cast many other businesses' assets into doubt.
I personally believe that IP laws should be reformed in some ways, and prevented from further measures attempting to make them stricter (DMCA and so on). Showing that the government (or a consortium of governments, of all things) is willing to simply sidestep a law which is of utmost importance in modern life when it feels like it would undermine all of the efforts to reform the law and many of the things which rely upon this law.
Ubuntu is a Linux distribution. The source to the packages is available in the same place as the packages themselves. Because of the way APT works, it doesn't make sense to have a monolithic source download for that sort of thing. You can download the source via the package manager.
It's a specific method, but it's a pretty widely-used one nowadays, yes.
I would assume so. I think SQLObject for Python would be a possible target too.
Important to note (as you do) that Hibernate et al are far more profitable targets here though.
Where "you" is an expert user, who is in the minority. The majority of actual users, when they "reset" their system, want it back the way it came, and that's what this gives you.
I realise that a lot of these things bug the hell out of those of us that don't use these inane "tools" that come with OEM systems (and really, how hard could it be to just make them optional?), but we need to realise that we are not the majority, and our desires are not an exact match with those which work best for the majority. Unfortunately.
I always wondered about that personally. I guess it stops you losing it? It certainly makes tying it to the proprietary install media make sense. What would be nice would be if it was possible to get the vendor's specific install media from them (even has an ISO download) if you prove that you're an owner of one of their systems.
I would, but there's something about yelling "Oh, sex!" every time that I just can't help but love.
That's not the issue though — the issue was that there's just a stigma around Java now because it was slow in the past (due to a less refined implementation) and because its desktop APIs are generally terrible so desktop apps written in Java tend to be clunky and slow. If you used Java apps a while ago, or Java desktop apps, to gain your opinion of it being slow, you're damned right. But Java itself is not slow.
I'm always surprised with how much weight people put on optimisation. Generally I find that a few days with a profiler will find any serious bottlenecks, and otherwise a well-written system will be fairly performant anyway. Over-optimisation is as dangerous as anything else, and rarely yields positive results.
"Good" code is subjective in this context — I've seen a lot of incredibly poorly-written C code which is that way just because "it didn't work" and was hacked until it did. While its true that generally it's easier to get going with a language like Java (well, other than the verbose nature of the OO implementation), I don't think that this "lower entry requirement" leads to poorer code in general. That's just my positive view though, I realise that a great number of PHP apps are evidence to the contrary here ;).
But yes, Java ends up being slow in desktop apps, a lot of the time. In general, however, as Java implementations get better, even older apps will improve with it.
It's a sad day when something like this gets modded +5. Any justification for that comment would be appreciated, since it looks like nonsense FUD.
Java's performance isn't "poor" — as is frequently pointed out on this site, this is largely an outdated myth. As for not truly open source, it's a definate issue, yes, although there is open implementations.
You're thinking of SCROTUS.
Those are actually application windows, but it's closer to what I was thinking, yeah.
Yeah. I think GNOME is set up better as a functional system, whereas KDE is much more for the discerning tweaker, in a lot of ways. I've spent ages customising GNOME before, and always ended up back where I started because it works well as it's initially configured. Ah well.
Agreed, yeah. It's just a question of taste.
GNOME's interface supports every feature that I'm ever likely to need, I find that KDE does a lot of stuff all at once and it ends up confused and aimless. Thanks to your interference I've just installed KDE in order to give it a second (actually something like eighth, but let's not split hairs) chance though :)
I use GNOME, and it does much the same thing. As neat as KDE's features are, I find it clunky and difficult to use as a whole. Could just be me though!
If not overdone, it could be more intuitive. If icons are constantly in your way, that's an immediate incentive to organise them better. Current UIs frequently don't reflect the problems with lack of organisation until it's too late.
I agree with this. Using a thumbnail of documents would effectively fix this problem though, plus potentially make transitions to editing them more natural.
I doubt that this software is designed to interoperate with systems that don't support using a pen at all. I expect it's designed to be used on devices entirely controlled by pen. Most pen gestures are fairly equivalent to mouse operations in any case.