On another note... my first thought about Bill + "Altruistic Vaccine" was the same as the GP's --- that he's probably attempting to vaccinate against altruism. At least on some subconscious level. On a conscious level, he probably just thought, "Well, if I can't DRM software yet, I'll DRM people."
No, it's only silly to selfish people like you who only care about making themselves happy. Personally, I'm concerned about all unix users (and all computer users in fact), so yes, having a default choice of theme that's not pretty is a problem.
What reactionaries are modding this "troll"? It's a perfectly valid comment, for anyone who has actually sat down and compared the libraries. Also, it's a perfectly reasonable issue to consider, now that both desktops' core libraries share common licenses and have essentially become interchangeable. Yes, that interchange would involve hard work, which may lead reactionaries to reject it, but what progress doesn't involve hard work? It would at least be nice to see a study of some GNOME app re-implemented in Qt, and what the pros/cons are. I know for a fact that at least a few apps have have been ported from GNOME to Qt (Qt3, though, I think), and probably some have been ported the other way too. Even just those historical cases with Qt3, the case study would be interesting.
I didn't know the GNOME-compatible look/feel had improved much with Qt4.5, thanks.
On QtCreator... yeah, that's what I meant when I said QtDesigner. Just tried it last night, and it was quite... interesting. I really can't say nice, because it showed more potential than actual beauty, but it did make me stop and think a little:)
Agreed. GNOME is great and all, but I feel it could have gone (and could go) a lot further with a better underlying (and fully OO from the start) library. All the stats I've seen suggest that Qt is much faster than GTK+ (and Cairo) too. The only thing is... I'd hate to lose the GNOME look/feel (especially not in favor of the god-awful KDE4 look and feel), and more importantly, I'd hate to lose Pango. Pango is probably the best thing that ever happened in GNOME.
It does have a certain shitness to the look, for some reason, at least in KDE. I noticed a while back that a bug was fixed in KDE 4 that rendered stuff with too many borders -- so when a widget was inside another widget, or adjoining another widget, they would both render a border. Kind of hoped that would solve the vague cluttered/weird/awkward feel, but it's hard to tell, since KDE 4 went with the horrible Oxygen theme which could make any widget library look like crap. I suspect Qt itself can still look very nice though. I don't mind the look of Google Earth, for instance, and QtDesigner is quite nice in places at least, though simplistic, even WITH it's horrible KDE4-like colors etc.
That said, Qt is way more than than a widget look/theme. It's a very nice OO library for cross-platform GUI (and non-GUI) applications, with modern threading and event-driven programming support, etc. It's one of the few libraries that make me even consider using C++ these days, as opposed to nicer, more rapid languages like python++. I also think that, if GNOME had used a library of similar quality** and similar OO features, then the GNOME desktop, and Free Software in general, would probably be a lot more advanced at this stage.
++ Yes, I know PyQt is available ** Yes, I know that GNOME was a reponse to Qt's early licenses, and that Harmony didn't pan out
There is a long and storied tradition of a huge fan upswell convincing a company to put for money on a project only for it to fail due to lack of actual sales when the time comes.
Which, arguably of course, goes to show that corporations should not be allowed to control things that matter to people, since there is obviously a deeper interest in products than in buying the latest one.
No, they're pushing CLR. They don't care if you use C# or IronPython, as long as it's limited to a platform they control. Note that this almost certainly includes mono -- what better than to create a platform that abstracts your software away from x86 to any mobile device etc., and to have Novell do all the work of supporting those other devices while you focus on windows until it goes extinct?
But their intent has clearly been to defraud/infringe copyright/etc.
How do YOU know what their intent is? Are you psychic or something? The vast majority of people do things because, on some level, they believe those are the most correct things to do -- their reasoning may be as simple as "they're bastards, so I'll be a bastard too", but even that, in a way, is acting out of some sense of fairness and justice.
Yes, they're weaseling around with the legal system. Then again, the legal, and corporate, system is weaseling around with fair use, the human right to share and create, etc. Backlashes should be expected.
Yeah, I don't get how these highly-metered services even exist -- especially on "landline broadband". Even in mobile broadband, it's nowhere near justifiable, methinks. Anyone who pays $40 for half a CD per month of data transfer in 2009 is batshit insane. That probably wouldn't even cover the spam I get.
Nope. Believe it or not, they were telling the truth, and it still applies. This is possible due to a little-known law enacted in the summer of 1837, which states that lawsuits are not really considered to be lawsuits, if they're brought against defenseless pensioners who have no idea what the charge means, much less how to defend themselves against it.
Hardly helpful when (laser, I think) beam focused on your office window can effectively turn it into a remote speaker. However, something that negates the sound waves generated by your words might just solve that. Probably not -- probably, if you can a monitor a laser beam, you can monitor it fast enough to detect the difference between sounds as said, and sounds after negation. But it's a start.
I'd be much more interested in something like this around the engine of my car. I think some of the high-end companies like Mercedes were looking at that use years ago. Some car company, at least. Slashdot carried a story recently saying that silent cars were to be illegal (due to risk of accidents) in one jurisdiction though, which would really suck.
Not the first netbook... since it was expensive as hell.
Yep. This is like people claiming that CDTVs were the first convergence of games consoles, TV, optical disc players, stereo/surround sound, and front room hi-fi entertainment centres. Aside from that not being true, it was underpowered so that it didn't have the appeal of later devices, it was marketed poorly in a world that wasn't ready (it would have needed to be marketed better). The result is that it was just a cheap console version of an amiga that was too old to run the latest games already, and that no one really saw it as what it was marketed as. Even if it technically could have kicked things off, it didn't. It was much later, when the world was ready, that the playstation 2 etc. really started to make that market. Arguably, the market has actually gone in entirely the opposite direction, as more divergence with things like cheaper hi-fis and ipods and car-dash-mounted mp3 players have redefined things.
It's actually quite telling that a country that took a stand so strongly against invading and imposing outside will on a country's freedom is entirely failing at understanding and dealing with the more subtle corruptions of big media and government.
Slashdot Mirror
For those who find Brin's writing style tiresome to wade through: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Giving_Plague
On another note... my first thought about Bill + "Altruistic Vaccine" was the same as the GP's --- that he's probably attempting to vaccinate against altruism. At least on some subconscious level. On a conscious level, he probably just thought, "Well, if I can't DRM software yet, I'll DRM people."
So... your mind becomes a 486?
No, it's only silly to selfish people like you who only care about making themselves happy. Personally, I'm concerned about all unix users (and all computer users in fact), so yes, having a default choice of theme that's not pretty is a problem.
That happens a lot.
Officer: "You're under arrest for driving with only three wheels."
Driver: "But there are four wheels. Two on the front and two on the back. Two plus two equals four."
Officer: "Alright smart-ass, out of the car."
What reactionaries are modding this "troll"? It's a perfectly valid comment, for anyone who has actually sat down and compared the libraries. Also, it's a perfectly reasonable issue to consider, now that both desktops' core libraries share common licenses and have essentially become interchangeable. Yes, that interchange would involve hard work, which may lead reactionaries to reject it, but what progress doesn't involve hard work? It would at least be nice to see a study of some GNOME app re-implemented in Qt, and what the pros/cons are. I know for a fact that at least a few apps have have been ported from GNOME to Qt (Qt3, though, I think), and probably some have been ported the other way too. Even just those historical cases with Qt3, the case study would be interesting.
I didn't know the GNOME-compatible look/feel had improved much with Qt4.5, thanks.
On QtCreator... yeah, that's what I meant when I said QtDesigner. Just tried it last night, and it was quite... interesting. I really can't say nice, because it showed more potential than actual beauty, but it did make me stop and think a little :)
This doesn't work. They tried it with Vista.
Agreed. GNOME is great and all, but I feel it could have gone (and could go) a lot further with a better underlying (and fully OO from the start) library. All the stats I've seen suggest that Qt is much faster than GTK+ (and Cairo) too. The only thing is... I'd hate to lose the GNOME look/feel (especially not in favor of the god-awful KDE4 look and feel), and more importantly, I'd hate to lose Pango. Pango is probably the best thing that ever happened in GNOME.
It does have a certain shitness to the look, for some reason, at least in KDE. I noticed a while back that a bug was fixed in KDE 4 that rendered stuff with too many borders -- so when a widget was inside another widget, or adjoining another widget, they would both render a border. Kind of hoped that would solve the vague cluttered/weird/awkward feel, but it's hard to tell, since KDE 4 went with the horrible Oxygen theme which could make any widget library look like crap. I suspect Qt itself can still look very nice though. I don't mind the look of Google Earth, for instance, and QtDesigner is quite nice in places at least, though simplistic, even WITH it's horrible KDE4-like colors etc.
That said, Qt is way more than than a widget look/theme. It's a very nice OO library for cross-platform GUI (and non-GUI) applications, with modern threading and event-driven programming support, etc. It's one of the few libraries that make me even consider using C++ these days, as opposed to nicer, more rapid languages like python++. I also think that, if GNOME had used a library of similar quality** and similar OO features, then the GNOME desktop, and Free Software in general, would probably be a lot more advanced at this stage.
++ Yes, I know PyQt is available
** Yes, I know that GNOME was a reponse to Qt's early licenses, and that Harmony didn't pan out
Ideal for when your HD storage cupboard doubles as a tumble dryer.
Which, arguably of course, goes to show that corporations should not be allowed to control things that matter to people, since there is obviously a deeper interest in products than in buying the latest one.
Employees, governments, laws, and ethical awareness comes and goes, but the corporations just keep growing and lobbying.
Yeah, they're using windows without the .exe/.dll loader component.
No, they're pushing CLR. They don't care if you use C# or IronPython, as long as it's limited to a platform they control. Note that this almost certainly includes mono -- what better than to create a platform that abstracts your software away from x86 to any mobile device etc., and to have Novell do all the work of supporting those other devices while you focus on windows until it goes extinct?
It'll be ready when it's ready.
In other words, when the samba guys wrest the specifications from microsoft, figure out what's broken with it, and reimplement it all properly.
What's that you say? As computers become more speech-oriented, buttons will be obsolete?
How do YOU know what their intent is? Are you psychic or something? The vast majority of people do things because, on some level, they believe those are the most correct things to do -- their reasoning may be as simple as "they're bastards, so I'll be a bastard too", but even that, in a way, is acting out of some sense of fairness and justice.
Yes, they're weaseling around with the legal system. Then again, the legal, and corporate, system is weaseling around with fair use, the human right to share and create, etc. Backlashes should be expected.
Yeah, I don't get how these highly-metered services even exist -- especially on "landline broadband". Even in mobile broadband, it's nowhere near justifiable, methinks. Anyone who pays $40 for half a CD per month of data transfer in 2009 is batshit insane. That probably wouldn't even cover the spam I get.
Certainly not. Invading is a present-tense verb.
But setting that aside, I think you're agreeing with me ;)
Nope. Believe it or not, they were telling the truth, and it still applies. This is possible due to a little-known law enacted in the summer of 1837, which states that lawsuits are not really considered to be lawsuits, if they're brought against defenseless pensioners who have no idea what the charge means, much less how to defend themselves against it.
Hardly helpful when (laser, I think) beam focused on your office window can effectively turn it into a remote speaker. However, something that negates the sound waves generated by your words might just solve that. Probably not -- probably, if you can a monitor a laser beam, you can monitor it fast enough to detect the difference between sounds as said, and sounds after negation. But it's a start.
I'd be much more interested in something like this around the engine of my car. I think some of the high-end companies like Mercedes were looking at that use years ago. Some car company, at least. Slashdot carried a story recently saying that silent cars were to be illegal (due to risk of accidents) in one jurisdiction though, which would really suck.
Yep. This is like people claiming that CDTVs were the first convergence of games consoles, TV, optical disc players, stereo/surround sound, and front room hi-fi entertainment centres. Aside from that not being true, it was underpowered so that it didn't have the appeal of later devices, it was marketed poorly in a world that wasn't ready (it would have needed to be marketed better). The result is that it was just a cheap console version of an amiga that was too old to run the latest games already, and that no one really saw it as what it was marketed as. Even if it technically could have kicked things off, it didn't. It was much later, when the world was ready, that the playstation 2 etc. really started to make that market. Arguably, the market has actually gone in entirely the opposite direction, as more divergence with things like cheaper hi-fis and ipods and car-dash-mounted mp3 players have redefined things.
It's actually quite telling that a country that took a stand so strongly against invading and imposing outside will on a country's freedom is entirely failing at understanding and dealing with the more subtle corruptions of big media and government.
Yes, like you're better off not writing your MP if your president happens to be married to a big media activist.
Yes, but gaining a tool by building your own IS an alternative to doing without because someone won't let you use theirs.