No, what I'm saying is that, at the moment, the government(s) largely prop up one organisation's development: microsoft's. When stuck with microsoft's closed apps, the best a contractor can usually do is script some macros for office, or write a plugin. Maybe an add-on app, if they're lucky enough that their use cases fit that model. However, with open, standards compliant, free software, anyone can develop new features, even for the core operating systems in use, or the core office suite in use. Redhat could be contracted to provide government with OS, but Ubuntu might be preferred for a future upgrade. Currently, we don't have this freedom.
OK, we seem to fundamentally disagree then, so I'll respect that and agree to disagree.
And the thing with "rentals" is that when you "rent" a digital movie (from iTunes or Netflix or someplace like that), you don't "own" that file.
I'd be careful about using the term "own" when making your arguments though, as many people see it in the polar opposite way: that files they download (rented or not) ARE owned (just as you own the copy of a car design that you buy). Whereas the designs represented by those files may or may not be owned by someone who downloads, depending on license and even their own interpretation of that license, etc., many people feel they have a natural right to move the file they own to any platform, and play it or convert it in any way they prefer.
a) Selfishness. Too many sites allow you to use their database to log into others, but not use others to log into theirs. Seems the big players want to be the ones owning your data, just like MS tried to own logins with its system... whatever that was called.
b) What does OpenID actually gain you? You still have to enter login details. It's just a URL instead of a username. Others have said this above too, but what's needed is something like a wallet: infocard or a keyring manager, which keeps track of all your details on your machine, and extends your single desktop sign-on to websites, so you don't need to log in at all. Most of this tech is available and implemented, with firefox's password memory, and desktops' wallets. Unfortunately, again, people are competing to control this, instead of focusing on an open system. An open, Infocard system for GNOME/KDE and other desktops (all equally supported and native), which presents web logins as "Here's your wallet. Select which ID card you want this site to use" would nail this problem easily.
Agreed. This is why Peter Quinn's sovereignty argument for OpenDocument in MA was so apt. It's not about Linux, but communicating lofty ideals like Free Software to government types is difficult. When you start talking about the ancient political documents like a constitution though, and government responsibility to preserve them in a neutral format, things become a lot clearer. Add in the Peruvian arguments for an openly competitive economy based around open standards in software, and it's clear that government's absolute responsibility is to choose free software and standards. So no, Linux should not be forced, but yes, free software should. Our taxes should not prop up individual corporations -- especially when that monopolizes their power and cripples other parts of the economy.
Seriously... what CONCEPTUAL differences do you see exactly that necessitate an entirely new implementation of these languages? Yes, Vala is compiled, but ruby and python have been compiled too. Yes, ruby has closures, but python has lambdas and can pass function identifiers (or objects) as callable variables. Yes, python-3.0 has decent unicode now, but ruby attempts it too, albeit poorly. No, Vala is not so portable without GTK+, but GTK+ has been ported, and even CPython needed to be ported to other platforms.
These are not different concepts, just different implementations.
Diversity in ideas, yes. Diversity in attempts to improve those ideas, and test implementations, yes. Diversity in implementations of the same concept? That's as silly as encouraging everyone to try to build a suspension bridge in their own wacky way.
No, you're interpreting the lack of DRM as the lack of ethical behaviour. If anything, taking away peoples' right to CHOOSE ethical behaviour means that no one can be ethical: only obedient.
Re:Man pages are not a quality control technique!
on
FreeBSD 7.1 Released
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· Score: 1
Let's try to keep it civil, OK? We're all on the same side here, just trying to encourage a good future for Unix docs. X is very much broken by the way, or you wouldn't have so many peop[le trying to fix it.
Don't you mean that all nerd-rage was distracted from Microsoft's attacks by the front organisation that was SCO?
Re:Man pages are not a quality control technique!
on
FreeBSD 7.1 Released
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· Score: 1
Does "not ASCII only" mean "supporting all levels of unicode", bidirectional text layout and complex script support (chinese, thai, arabic, etc.) including support for mixing ancient chinese and old norse runes within the same page, abbreviations, diagrams with alternate descriptive text for visually impaired users, hypertext, semantic markup, etc., HTML can do all that, and it took damned hard work by a lot of people to achieve it. If man pages can't handle it, then they're insufficient for documenting modern software, imho.
Re:Man pages are not a quality control technique!
on
FreeBSD 7.1 Released
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· Score: 1
You'd really happily build window manager dependencies into Gnu/Linux?
Actually, since YOU bring it up, yes. Macs and Amigas had decent GUIs in ROM, with minimal overhead, back in the early 80s. The Amiga managed to nicely integrate that with a command line. But that was hardly my point, and I don't know why you read that into what I said.
I was talking about (and actually mentioned, iirc) lynx etc. If you think lynx's presentation is worse than man, that's fair enough, but that's subjective, and most people would probably disagree, given that so many are used to HTML, and, since the markup can/should be semantic, there are plenty of options for styling the output.
Benchmarks between competing free software projects? Don't be silly! Next thing, you'll be advocating some sort of sane system, like choosing the best of breed technology based stats like benchmarks, and uniting behind it! Think what kind of chaos Free Software would be in, if everyone decided that OpenGL was THE low-level graphics layer, that gstreamer was THE codec API, that Vala was THE high-level language, that Git was THE modern version control system, or that FUSE was THE place to develop filesystem stuff. Why, you'd have a straightforward stack, with very little bloat, and tons of people honing a single implementation.
Pandemonium, I tell you.
Man pages are not a quality control technique!
on
FreeBSD 7.1 Released
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· Score: 3, Insightful
As someone who both enjoyed discovering GNU Info (as it was about the only part of the GNU platform I could run on a 2MB Amiga 1200), and also enjoyed discovering the quality of FreeBSD's man pages, let me give another perspective:
There's absolutely no reason not to use HTML for documentation these days. There are plenty of lightweight text-mode browsers that would suffice in emergencies or during ssh sessions, but also nice desktop apps that would let new users browse them and feel at home. More importantly, it supports modern features, like links to the actual organisations online who support a particular app, or where bugs can be reported, links to email, diagrams, unicode for multilingual support, screenreader support, etc.
Yes, manpages can be nice, and coherent, quality documentation is important. GNU's horrible info browser is certainly not up to it. BUT... let's get with the times. There's no point advocating man pages in the modern world. If you want good docs, argue for good docs in modern formats, not old formats that happen to sometimes have instances of good docs.
Personally I use faubackup+ssh (with keys) for both network and local backups, and it works great. I'm not advocating the lack of backups based on the problem of finding a decent external drive; just saying that finding a decent external drive isn't that easy, in itself.
The Western Digital MyBook I bought packed up within three days. After buying a replacement PSU, it worked for another two days, then gave up the ghost completely. I hear many USB enclosures are similar. The drive itself works fine, and is now inside my desktop, but the enclosures seem to be pretty poor, generally speaking. I do know of one Mac guy who loves his wifi-enabled NAS/drive/thing.
Speed: if you know a constellation of stars is in our galaxy, then you can track it's movement speed. Especially since we have software that'll give the position of constellations right back to egyptian times, etc.
Mass: they're working this out based on the rotation speed.
Hmm. Fair points. I guess I've always favored moving on ASAP in new versions, and simply supporting the older versions where necessary. Maybe that's coming from a standpoint of complete systems of closely-knit components, like OSes rather than many distributed cooperating projects.
Have you looked at Vala at all? It seems to be the perfect answer to C#. Not only is it totally free and open source, with no MS dependency, it's FASTER, and LEANER, with no runtime dependencies except for gobject, which all other GNOME software depends on anyway. It's faster and leaner than C++ even, according to benchmarks. Vala truly seems to be the way forward for serious app development on GNOME. I can't wait 'til it hits 1.0.
Genie is a similar project, but using a python-like syntax. It's more recent, and isn't in debian/ubuntu yet (which means I haven't really bothered with it yet), but seems to provide similar advantages.
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No, what I'm saying is that, at the moment, the government(s) largely prop up one organisation's development: microsoft's. When stuck with microsoft's closed apps, the best a contractor can usually do is script some macros for office, or write a plugin. Maybe an add-on app, if they're lucky enough that their use cases fit that model. However, with open, standards compliant, free software, anyone can develop new features, even for the core operating systems in use, or the core office suite in use. Redhat could be contracted to provide government with OS, but Ubuntu might be preferred for a future upgrade. Currently, we don't have this freedom.
OK, we seem to fundamentally disagree then, so I'll respect that and agree to disagree.
I'd be careful about using the term "own" when making your arguments though, as many people see it in the polar opposite way: that files they download (rented or not) ARE owned (just as you own the copy of a car design that you buy). Whereas the designs represented by those files may or may not be owned by someone who downloads, depending on license and even their own interpretation of that license, etc., many people feel they have a natural right to move the file they own to any platform, and play it or convert it in any way they prefer.
Effort was never the issue. The issues are:
a) Selfishness. Too many sites allow you to use their database to log into others, but not use others to log into theirs. Seems the big players want to be the ones owning your data, just like MS tried to own logins with its system... whatever that was called.
b) What does OpenID actually gain you? You still have to enter login details. It's just a URL instead of a username. Others have said this above too, but what's needed is something like a wallet: infocard or a keyring manager, which keeps track of all your details on your machine, and extends your single desktop sign-on to websites, so you don't need to log in at all. Most of this tech is available and implemented, with firefox's password memory, and desktops' wallets. Unfortunately, again, people are competing to control this, instead of focusing on an open system. An open, Infocard system for GNOME/KDE and other desktops (all equally supported and native), which presents web logins as "Here's your wallet. Select which ID card you want this site to use" would nail this problem easily.
Are you aware that DRM has been quite consistently used to limit consumers' rights more than the law would?
Agreed. This is why Peter Quinn's sovereignty argument for OpenDocument in MA was so apt. It's not about Linux, but communicating lofty ideals like Free Software to government types is difficult. When you start talking about the ancient political documents like a constitution though, and government responsibility to preserve them in a neutral format, things become a lot clearer. Add in the Peruvian arguments for an openly competitive economy based around open standards in software, and it's clear that government's absolute responsibility is to choose free software and standards. So no, Linux should not be forced, but yes, free software should. Our taxes should not prop up individual corporations -- especially when that monopolizes their power and cripples other parts of the economy.
Perl? I was talking about high-level languages ;)
Seriously... what CONCEPTUAL differences do you see exactly that necessitate an entirely new implementation of these languages? Yes, Vala is compiled, but ruby and python have been compiled too. Yes, ruby has closures, but python has lambdas and can pass function identifiers (or objects) as callable variables. Yes, python-3.0 has decent unicode now, but ruby attempts it too, albeit poorly. No, Vala is not so portable without GTK+, but GTK+ has been ported, and even CPython needed to be ported to other platforms.
These are not different concepts, just different implementations.
When it pays you well, your title is upgraded from "criminal" to "CEO".
But seriously... is this article even news? Socially destructive behaviour bites you in the ass eventually? Isn't that pretty much evolution 101?
Diversity in ideas, yes. Diversity in attempts to improve those ideas, and test implementations, yes. Diversity in implementations of the same concept? That's as silly as encouraging everyone to try to build a suspension bridge in their own wacky way.
No, you're interpreting the lack of DRM as the lack of ethical behaviour. If anything, taking away peoples' right to CHOOSE ethical behaviour means that no one can be ethical: only obedient.
Let's try to keep it civil, OK? We're all on the same side here, just trying to encourage a good future for Unix docs. X is very much broken by the way, or you wouldn't have so many peop[le trying to fix it.
Don't you mean that all nerd-rage was distracted from Microsoft's attacks by the front organisation that was SCO?
Does "not ASCII only" mean "supporting all levels of unicode", bidirectional text layout and complex script support (chinese, thai, arabic, etc.) including support for mixing ancient chinese and old norse runes within the same page, abbreviations, diagrams with alternate descriptive text for visually impaired users, hypertext, semantic markup, etc., HTML can do all that, and it took damned hard work by a lot of people to achieve it. If man pages can't handle it, then they're insufficient for documenting modern software, imho.
Actually, since YOU bring it up, yes. Macs and Amigas had decent GUIs in ROM, with minimal overhead, back in the early 80s. The Amiga managed to nicely integrate that with a command line. But that was hardly my point, and I don't know why you read that into what I said.
I was talking about (and actually mentioned, iirc) lynx etc. If you think lynx's presentation is worse than man, that's fair enough, but that's subjective, and most people would probably disagree, given that so many are used to HTML, and, since the markup can/should be semantic, there are plenty of options for styling the output.
Plenty of people would. DRM is ethically wrong** all of the time, not just technically inappropriate sometimes.
** the reasons for which, you can read about from people smarter than me
Benchmarks between competing free software projects? Don't be silly! Next thing, you'll be advocating some sort of sane system, like choosing the best of breed technology based stats like benchmarks, and uniting behind it! Think what kind of chaos Free Software would be in, if everyone decided that OpenGL was THE low-level graphics layer, that gstreamer was THE codec API, that Vala was THE high-level language, that Git was THE modern version control system, or that FUSE was THE place to develop filesystem stuff. Why, you'd have a straightforward stack, with very little bloat, and tons of people honing a single implementation.
Pandemonium, I tell you.
As someone who both enjoyed discovering GNU Info (as it was about the only part of the GNU platform I could run on a 2MB Amiga 1200), and also enjoyed discovering the quality of FreeBSD's man pages, let me give another perspective:
There's absolutely no reason not to use HTML for documentation these days. There are plenty of lightweight text-mode browsers that would suffice in emergencies or during ssh sessions, but also nice desktop apps that would let new users browse them and feel at home. More importantly, it supports modern features, like links to the actual organisations online who support a particular app, or where bugs can be reported, links to email, diagrams, unicode for multilingual support, screenreader support, etc.
Yes, manpages can be nice, and coherent, quality documentation is important. GNU's horrible info browser is certainly not up to it. BUT... let's get with the times. There's no point advocating man pages in the modern world. If you want good docs, argue for good docs in modern formats, not old formats that happen to sometimes have instances of good docs.
Personally I use faubackup+ssh (with keys) for both network and local backups, and it works great. I'm not advocating the lack of backups based on the problem of finding a decent external drive; just saying that finding a decent external drive isn't that easy, in itself.
The Western Digital MyBook I bought packed up within three days. After buying a replacement PSU, it worked for another two days, then gave up the ghost completely. I hear many USB enclosures are similar. The drive itself works fine, and is now inside my desktop, but the enclosures seem to be pretty poor, generally speaking. I do know of one Mac guy who loves his wifi-enabled NAS/drive/thing.
True enough, however, ReactOS might be an option too. It would let you use more windows drivers, if nothing else.
Speed: if you know a constellation of stars is in our galaxy, then you can track it's movement speed. Especially since we have software that'll give the position of constellations right back to egyptian times, etc.
Mass: they're working this out based on the rotation speed.
Actually, this is an intermediate step. They now know how to tag perl 6, if/when it does arrive.
Hmm. Fair points. I guess I've always favored moving on ASAP in new versions, and simply supporting the older versions where necessary. Maybe that's coming from a standpoint of complete systems of closely-knit components, like OSes rather than many distributed cooperating projects.
Anyway, thanks again for your thoughts on this.
Which is pretty much what free software is all about.
Spacefeet?
One word: webkit.
Have you looked at Vala at all? It seems to be the perfect answer to C#. Not only is it totally free and open source, with no MS dependency, it's FASTER, and LEANER, with no runtime dependencies except for gobject, which all other GNOME software depends on anyway. It's faster and leaner than C++ even, according to benchmarks. Vala truly seems to be the way forward for serious app development on GNOME. I can't wait 'til it hits 1.0.
Genie is a similar project, but using a python-like syntax. It's more recent, and isn't in debian/ubuntu yet (which means I haven't really bothered with it yet), but seems to provide similar advantages.