The Xbox360 doesn't have a HD-DVD drive it has a normal old DVD drive.
Yer, I did a shit job of explaining what I meant. I assumed that in the future Microsoft would gear the Xbox up to being HD-DVD-centric for films and also games as well, with a lot of Microsoft influenced technology thrown in. Those plans look to have been pretty scuppered now. If they still go with HD-DVD then they're going to need it to do BD as well.
With rather an expensive, obsolete drive, lacking in film titles to play and games being produced on a media that now has no economy of scale. Mind you, it should make piracy a bit more difficult!
However, I think it's going to be a long road for BluRay to get to a point where it will move past DVD, and it will take far longer than DVD took to move past VHS. Arguably, DVD only really accelerated in popularity when people realised that they could be copied, the purchase of blank DVD media and DVD writers then accelerated and this accelerated the usage of DVD further. I just can't see that happening with BluRay for quite some time, not to mention that people are confused as to why they should spend more on a BluRay disc than a much cheaper DVD one if they can't really see the difference.
Unfortunately, Hardy falls at an awkward time with respect to 4.0 (or vice versa) - 4.0 isn't ready for long term support, but 3.5 isn't likely to be relevant for 3 long years. As a result, while Ubuntu 8.04 will be a Long Term Support (LTS) release, Kubuntu 8.04 will not be.
This is complete rubbish, and is a poor decision from Canonical (not the first, I might add). The desktop that should have been in 8.04 is KDE 3.5.x, and many KDE developers have stated that KDE 3.5 will continue to be supported. Canonical never even sought a dialogue with KDE developers and just assumed that KDE 3.5 would be left without any fixes up until 2011:
"The KDE upstream position appears clear, KDE 4 is the focus of developer attention; KDE 3.5 will be supported as long as KDE 4 isn't suitable for support."
This is not the position of KDE that I have seen, and is merely an assumption. Like everything in the open source word, if there is demand then it will continue to be maintained and looked after. KDE 3.5 doesn't need much of that. You would have thought that Canonical could have at least provided one or two people to help with that, especially if people are forking out for support contracts.
Second, on my hard dreve, and most other hardrives of people running Linux or some othe kind of unixlike system, the number of links are only around 0.01% of all files on the hard drive, and most of these files are created by some kind of script. So the chance that this menu item should be used is very small.
Oh right. Few will use it so it's OK to cut a quick and easy way to do it from the GUI that costs nothing?
Fourth, it doesn't fit in the desktop methaphore. There is no such thing as copying things or making links on your real physical desktop.
So we don't copy and paste files really then? OK............
Fifth, Mac, Gnome, Windows and CDE users seam to be able to live without it.
A great deal of Windows and Mac users do exactly what I've described above regardless.
This means that more than 90% of all new KDE users wil havet to relearn when they switch to KDE.
What a load of shite. Why don't we just clone Windows? They'll never need to relearn anything!
Just try to sort a few hundred images from your digital camera with this popping up all the time.
What do you mean by 'sort'?
Sorry but an awful lot of this is usability straw clutching again.
the bliss that is getting harassed with a context menu every single fricken time they drag and drop a file!
I actually find it pretty useful. At least, unlike other desktop environments, I actually know when a file is going to be copied or moved, and I am not going to go somewhere in a hurry with my USB flash disk only to find that I've only made a bloody shortcut to the file that is about fifty miles away. It happens.
How can an open source software company with $70 million or so in revenue and no profits to speak of be worth $1 billion?
How were any of the dot com businesses valued at more than that? A lot of MySQL's value comes from its standing as basically the database backend of the web. Yes Postgres is out there, but most databases are MySQL. That name carries a fair bit of weight.
It appears though that the additional features of the Enterprise version are not enough to compensate for the revenue-destroying effects of the free Community alternative.
Why is it revenue destroying? I see lots of analysts fail to understand this. The free 'version' of MySQL forms most of the web backend databases out there. There is such a huge installed base. If and when companies look to do other things then it's a logical jump for them to pay for MySQL's enterprise stuff. It is highly doubtful that MySQL could have got the revenues they have got, competing against Oracle, SQL Server and alike without that installed base and word of mouth.
The fact that the second most famous open source company on the planet has been busy selling closed source software has attracted remarkably little critical notice from the usually vocal open source community.
Probably because there are lots of tools for MySQL database out there, open source or not, and it doesn't stop people using MySQL. If MySQL wants to sell closed source enterprise tools, all power to them.
I do find it amusing though that the company's marketing mavens obviously don't think it's a good idea to tout this aspect of their strategy.
Why would they? Although I grant you, I do find their literature on what version to use misleading, but if you go the open source route then you have to work it out for yourself.
The reality is that - despite or more likely because of - its open source business model, MySQL wasn't growing fast enough or making enough money to entertain the prospect of an IPO. Its venture capitalist backers, in for many tens of millions of dollars, were no doubt getting nervous as they realized the company was never going to be another Salesforce.com or VMware. Of course, as Jonathan Schwartz recounts in his blog, people have been making private offers to acquire MySQL for years, and these offers have always been declined. But this time the owners - the VCs, founders and executives - agreed to sell. No doubt they concluded that, on the eve of a possible slowdown in IT spending and with a strategic buyer like Sun willing to pay many times the company's paper value, they weren't likely to see a better offer in the foreseeable future.
Can't disagree with that though. I think many thought they were going to be in for hundreds of millions of dollars, and simply took what was on offer from Sun. That doesn't mean that MySQL won't be worth more then a billion dollars to Sun in all sorts of peripheral ways. Of course, it depends on Sun's management. That, is another story;-).
Personally, I find Postgres a bigger option to MySQL, which the author did not consider. Why Sun has bought MySQL when a database of that quality is already out there in the open source world, I don't know. We'll have to see.
LOX is routinely handled by thousands of industrial facilities in the US alone. Its properties are well known and it has been used safely for over a century.
That doesn't make it any better, safer or cheaper to produce, store and handle unfortunately. Why is a foam insulation coating needed on the shuttle's main fuel tank, what routinely hits the shuttle on take-off and what caused Columbia's destruction?
These are essentially new engines along with a new booster design and they should have had a design competition and weigh the relative merits of various design proposals. This was a fiat decision made by Griffin when he came into office. There was no technical justification. No weighing of options. Even the sizing of the Orion is extremely questionable.
I can't disagree with you there. It's a disappointment that something different wasn't done and more ideas sought. It feels a bit rushed in many ways.
You didn't read the links did you ?
Blue Streak didn't use H2O2, it used LOX and Kerosene.
How about you read what was written rather than jumping in to criticise?:-
...and their Blue Streak (HTP was used after the failure of LOX - impractical in an ICBM)
Blue Streak was a failure because they copied the Americans usage of LOX - a failure in an ICBM you want to launch in seconds pretty much. By the time they had really looked at HTP as the right option it was all too late and the Blue Streak was cancelled, but the technology went into Black Prince and Black Knight.
As for your summary, that leaves a lot to be desired too. You make it seem like the British abandoned a promising technology for churlish reasons, whereas the truth seems to be that a)there was nowhere in the UK to safely store them ready for use
You didn't read what was written. Blue Streak was eventually cancelled because of its ill advised use of LOX, and had gone past the point of no return. Suitable launch sites weren't even identified, so it never got to that stage. However, it became part of a wider project and a launch vehicle was built from the Blue Streak project where they learned their lessons and used HTP. This usage of HTP was like nothing that had been used before or since, and could have provided some real cost and convenience advantages in many areas, such as commercial satellite launches.
You also failed to mention both Black Night and Black Prince of which the latter was the project to build satellite launchers using Blue Streak as the first stage.
Yes I did.
Given that Blue Streak was cancelled, where did that leave Black Prince ?
It left it in a perfectly working state. Much of Blue Streak went into Black Knight and Black Prince and the two projects were great successes, both in terms of what was achieved and the comparable cost.
and b)we had another project (Skybolt) in cooperation with the US
Skybolt was such a fucking disaster it wasn't even funny. Like all projects entered into with the Americans (F1-11 etc. etc.), they decided they no longer needed it, cancelled the project and that left the British with no firm nuclear deterrent. They would have been better off continuing with their own technology and doing it themselves in less time.
You must bear in mind that in the 60s and 70s, Britain was very nearly broke.
There was still enough money to throw at Anglo-American projects that nearly always ended up being cancelled. Sometimes it's just cheaper to do it yourself.
Solid Rocket Boosters are sort of like strapping yourself to a firecracker. We can't have liquid ones?
You could have liquid ones, but they take an awful lot of development to get right. NASA, and US institutions in general, typically don't like them because of the danger involved (the Soviets have had some major disasters with liquid fuels). The only people who really did get liquid fuels to be fairly safe and reliable were the British and their Blue Streak (HTP was used after the failure of LOX - impractical in an ICBM), Black Arrow and Black Knight projects:
These rockets were a departure from everything else around, and used Hydrogen Peroxide as an oxidiser - cheap, readily available and works well at normal temperatures and pressure. Most considered the fuel to be too hazardous, and a Hydrogen Peroxide fuelled torpedo allegedly sank the Kursk (probably not sensible on a submarine), but the British developed ways to handle it safely and efficiently. To this day, no one else has tried this method and its pretty advanced rocketry even forty years on. It certainly gets rid of the dangerous handling of liquid oxygen, which has to be kept ultra cool and under controlled cryogenic conditions.
After a textbook final launch, the project was cancelled. Given the need for commercial satellite launches over the past few decades, the mind boggles as to how cheap and useful this could have been if developed further. The British, as per usual, decided that simply reusing the Scout solid fuelled rocket would be cheaper. Go figure.
Seriously, this was known about forty years ago and are called pogo oscillations. They are generally disastrous, and they were the cause of Apollo 13's fifth engine shut down after liftoff.
In general, I'm pretty non-plussed by NASA's moon landing attempts. Their design is basically Apollo rehashed plus forty years (fifty years if it actually launches - pretty depressing), the vast majority of it isn't reusable (I haven't got a clue how they can call it a shuttle replacement) and it really doesn't get us any further forwards in terms of making getting into space easier, safer and something that can be done on a regular basis.
Why do people treat shit camera work as though it's something raw and edgy?
I concur with that one whole heartily. I've been seeing more if it recently, not just in some films, but in TV programmes and dramas. Shaky camera work and also, hiding the camera behind inanimate objects such as flowers, vases etc. so we can't get a clear view of the subject. What the fuck is that all about?
I have, I built it from source, it was easy. Checkinstall even automatically generated a package for me.
You missed the point dipshit. You're having to handle source here because of the limitations of a binary packaging system. If you're having to handle the source then you're already in a whole different territory, and good luck satisfying the surrounding dependencies.
Try again fuck face. The only reason you're pissed off is because you're becoming irrelevant, as the abandonment by your own foundation clearly demonstrates.
I say something against binary packaging systems and someone immediately thinks I'm some sort of rabid Gentoo supporter (I don't do much with Gentoo today, hence the post about how the alternative is a bit crap). It kind of throws a new light on all that Gentoo ricer stuff people like to throw about as a laugh.
I never liked the condescending attitude of those Gentoo users that think compiling everything was always so superior to Yum or apt-get.
If you've ever had to hunt around for a package repository because your distribution does not provide, or no longer provides, updates for particular packages and you have no upgrade path - necessitating downloading the source and compiling yourself or completely upgrading your distribution to the latest and greatest - you'll know why the condescending attitude of binary repository developers that everything should be in a repository, and their derision of using source code as a solution, pisses a lot of people off. On top of this, try multiplying this up for different platforms,
When you have experienced this, come back and comment.
A lot of people on Slashdot will fly off the handle on this, but all-in-all, he's fairly balanced about who's wrong, who is balanced and what's wrong in the Rails community. He sets the scene as to what goes wrong when bringing in contractors, and how many in the Rails community have basically hyped all that to take advantage of the mess.
Certainly, he's correct about Rails deployment being unbelievable. I just couldn't believe it when I first got started. FastCGI was an unbelievable way to try and get something working, or not, and Textdrive's Apache handing off to local lighttpd ports is yet another recipe for disaster. Certainly, a web framework not being thread safe is unbelievable. Only Mongrel actually made it doable.
There's a lot to like about Ruby as a language and the Rails framework, but Ruby is more likely to be taken into the web world over the next few years by a new web framework or by something like JRuby. What he describes is spot on, and does not fill anyone with confidence.
And your point is what? Did you read the whole article? Did you read the bit where he was all high and mighty about Google not offering him a position worthy enough (but still being homeless for 6 months)?
Because you and the rest of Slashdot don't have a clue what he's actually talking about. He has accepted the responsibility that a lot of the things he has done have been his own fault, he's set the scene as to how many companies go about getting people (fact of life) and he's then discussed how this seems to be taken to a new high in the Rails community. It's people trying to make money off the back of Rails hype, who don't have a clue.
Did you read the attacks on employers not using him to his full potential and only wanting a code monkey?
He has a right to attack these people and their idiocy. What he's learned is that you have to pick your contracts wisely if you want to be paid and if you want to keep your sanity.
I've been a contractor for a long time (Ok, just gone permanent yesterday), and one thing I learned very early on in the game is that no matter what you are hired to do, you do the job you are given. If you don't like it, you hand your notice in and find another contract.
That doesn't stop him exposing the stupid practices.
You NEVER badmouth an employer, especially not in public, no matter how your working relationship ended.
These people are in a localised community, which he no longer makes his living from. If he was badmouthing every employer then I could take that view (he's not, and he praised a fair few people), but he's exposing a bunch of idiots who are costing everyone time, money and sanity, and that is his prerogative.
Zed can be slightly abrasive, but with Rails, until Mogrel came along there was no way of deploying Rails in production. The initial FastCGI method I found unbelievable, Textdrive's lighttpd set up is amateurish at best and for a web framework to not be thread safe is unbelievable. When it comes down to it, Zed is not just letting his mouth run off. He has answered everyone umpteen times over by actually writing code and something that works and is critical to deploying Rails. As a result of that I have some time for him.
It's also the benefit of being able to use any.Net language (C#, C++, J#, VB.Net, Python.Net, Ruby.Net, etc etc) to build the application.
I've always been curious about this language neutrality bullshit. What do you think is different between C# and VB.Net, considering that they are both.Net languages, apart from meaningless syntax?
Nokia obviously does not want to support Vorbis. That's not Quim's decision to make. He can't change reality on the bug report and say "sure, Nokia will support Vorbis tomorrow, everything will be fine and dandy", because it's clearly *not going to happen*. But Nokia's policy is not GNOME's, and what Nokia does really has no implications for what GNOME does.
You miss the point. He's coming out with something that is fundamentally at odds with the open source world, as well as regurgitating stuff that doesn't make sense, within something that is supposed to be an open source project. This is a problem that many open source developers have to face when they have corporate and open source interests to take care of.
It really doesn't matter whether it is his decision to make, but what it does show is that when there is a decision to be made for the wider benefit of Gnome, if it is at odds with how Nokia views things, then we know which side the toast will fall on the floor. That's not good for the well-being and integrity of any open source project. I'm surprised some people can't see that.
I tell people to use it because it doesn't feel like it's in you way all the time like KDE does.
Blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda. Can you quantify that please, or is this just the usual meaningless tripe? What do you tell them when they outgrow it, when they want to configure a screensaver, run an application as a different user, system administrators want to support their users etc. etc. These, by the way, are features Windows and Mac OS X have.
This ordinary 'user thing' is an extremely virilant disease.
So, my reason isn't "it's the default on a lot of distros". It's, "my god, that thing is so damned ugly (IMO)". I think it's a combination of extreme clutter, a general sense of disorganization, and some kind of "fragile" feel that I can't quite put my finger on
Unless you can quantify any of this then I'm afraid you've proved my point. In reality, telling people that it is a default on a few distros is probably better reasoning. At least you can quantify that in terms people can understand and can use to compare. In reality, all you're telling users is "I know Gnome is extremely limited if you from the OS X and Windows worlds, but hey, it's clean, simple, features confuse you anyway and it's better than that KDE thing that has clutter......and various other things that will confuse you."
Alas, this kind of reasoning is just going to come unstuck, and if Gnome is the face of desktop Linux as some people believe, then small wonder free desktops haven't got anywhere. You can't sell desktops to people based on a lie. If it hasn't got the features then it hasn't got the features people have in Windows and OS X. You can't butter this up in some sort of clean, simple and clutter lie.
Quim Gil is rather more directly involved in GNOME right now, but he also works for Nokia. He also clearly does not set Nokia's corporate policy. Therefore what he's doing on that bug report is reporting a corporate policy that stinks. This is obviously an uncomfortable position for him, but has sod all to do with GNOME.
He's heavily involved with Gnome, and on a bug report within an open source project that is Gnome related he is regurgitating a corporate policy that is totally at odds with the free and open source world?
Methinks that there are too many corporate interests here that are at odds with the open source world they purport to want to be in, and that he, and some others, don't know how to separate the two.
Slashdot Mirror
With rather an expensive, obsolete drive, lacking in film titles to play and games being produced on a media that now has no economy of scale. Mind you, it should make piracy a bit more difficult!
However, I think it's going to be a long road for BluRay to get to a point where it will move past DVD, and it will take far longer than DVD took to move past VHS. Arguably, DVD only really accelerated in popularity when people realised that they could be copied, the purchase of blank DVD media and DVD writers then accelerated and this accelerated the usage of DVD further. I just can't see that happening with BluRay for quite some time, not to mention that people are confused as to why they should spend more on a BluRay disc than a much cheaper DVD one if they can't really see the difference.
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/kubuntu-devel/2007-December/002099.html
This is not the position of KDE that I have seen, and is merely an assumption. Like everything in the open source word, if there is demand then it will continue to be maintained and looked after. KDE 3.5 doesn't need much of that. You would have thought that Canonical could have at least provided one or two people to help with that, especially if people are forking out for support contracts.
Sorry but an awful lot of this is usability straw clutching again.
Personally, I find Postgres a bigger option to MySQL, which the author did not consider. Why Sun has bought MySQL when a database of that quality is already out there in the open source world, I don't know. We'll have to see.
I can't disagree with you there. It's a disappointment that something different wasn't done and more ideas sought. It feels a bit rushed in many ways.
Blue Streak was a failure because they copied the Americans usage of LOX - a failure in an ICBM you want to launch in seconds pretty much. By the time they had really looked at HTP as the right option it was all too late and the Blue Streak was cancelled, but the technology went into Black Prince and Black Knight.
You didn't read what was written. Blue Streak was eventually cancelled because of its ill advised use of LOX, and had gone past the point of no return. Suitable launch sites weren't even identified, so it never got to that stage. However, it became part of a wider project and a launch vehicle was built from the Blue Streak project where they learned their lessons and used HTP. This usage of HTP was like nothing that had been used before or since, and could have provided some real cost and convenience advantages in many areas, such as commercial satellite launches.
Yes I did.
It left it in a perfectly working state. Much of Blue Streak went into Black Knight and Black Prince and the two projects were great successes, both in terms of what was achieved and the comparable cost.
Skybolt was such a fucking disaster it wasn't even funny. Like all projects entered into with the Americans (F1-11 etc. etc.), they decided they no longer needed it, cancelled the project and that left the British with no firm nuclear deterrent. They would have been better off continuing with their own technology and doing it themselves in less time.
There was still enough money to throw at Anglo-American projects that nearly always ended up being cancelled. Sometimes it's just cheaper to do it yourself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_streak
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Arrow
These rockets were a departure from everything else around, and used Hydrogen Peroxide as an oxidiser - cheap, readily available and works well at normal temperatures and pressure. Most considered the fuel to be too hazardous, and a Hydrogen Peroxide fuelled torpedo allegedly sank the Kursk (probably not sensible on a submarine), but the British developed ways to handle it safely and efficiently. To this day, no one else has tried this method and its pretty advanced rocketry even forty years on. It certainly gets rid of the dangerous handling of liquid oxygen, which has to be kept ultra cool and under controlled cryogenic conditions.
After a textbook final launch, the project was cancelled. Given the need for commercial satellite launches over the past few decades, the mind boggles as to how cheap and useful this could have been if developed further. The British, as per usual, decided that simply reusing the Scout solid fuelled rocket would be cheaper. Go figure.
Seriously, this was known about forty years ago and are called pogo oscillations. They are generally disastrous, and they were the cause of Apollo 13's fifth engine shut down after liftoff.
In general, I'm pretty non-plussed by NASA's moon landing attempts. Their design is basically Apollo rehashed plus forty years (fifty years if it actually launches - pretty depressing), the vast majority of it isn't reusable (I haven't got a clue how they can call it a shuttle replacement) and it really doesn't get us any further forwards in terms of making getting into space easier, safer and something that can be done on a regular basis.
That's after it hits us.
I say something against binary packaging systems and someone immediately thinks I'm some sort of rabid Gentoo supporter (I don't do much with Gentoo today, hence the post about how the alternative is a bit crap). It kind of throws a new light on all that Gentoo ricer stuff people like to throw about as a laugh.
When you have experienced this, come back and comment.
A lot of people on Slashdot will fly off the handle on this, but all-in-all, he's fairly balanced about who's wrong, who is balanced and what's wrong in the Rails community. He sets the scene as to what goes wrong when bringing in contractors, and how many in the Rails community have basically hyped all that to take advantage of the mess.
Certainly, he's correct about Rails deployment being unbelievable. I just couldn't believe it when I first got started. FastCGI was an unbelievable way to try and get something working, or not, and Textdrive's Apache handing off to local lighttpd ports is yet another recipe for disaster. Certainly, a web framework not being thread safe is unbelievable. Only Mongrel actually made it doable.
There's a lot to like about Ruby as a language and the Rails framework, but Ruby is more likely to be taken into the web world over the next few years by a new web framework or by something like JRuby. What he describes is spot on, and does not fill anyone with confidence.
He has a right to attack these people and their idiocy. What he's learned is that you have to pick your contracts wisely if you want to be paid and if you want to keep your sanity.
That doesn't stop him exposing the stupid practices.
These people are in a localised community, which he no longer makes his living from. If he was badmouthing every employer then I could take that view (he's not, and he praised a fair few people), but he's exposing a bunch of idiots who are costing everyone time, money and sanity, and that is his prerogative.
Zed can be slightly abrasive, but with Rails, until Mogrel came along there was no way of deploying Rails in production. The initial FastCGI method I found unbelievable, Textdrive's lighttpd set up is amateurish at best and for a web framework to not be thread safe is unbelievable. When it comes down to it, Zed is not just letting his mouth run off. He has answered everyone umpteen times over by actually writing code and something that works and is critical to deploying Rails. As a result of that I have some time for him.
I didn't know there were more than 12 months in a year.
Ah yes, turning right at red lights. The US' sole contribution to western society.
It really doesn't matter whether it is his decision to make, but what it does show is that when there is a decision to be made for the wider benefit of Gnome, if it is at odds with how Nokia views things, then we know which side the toast will fall on the floor. That's not good for the well-being and integrity of any open source project. I'm surprised some people can't see that.
This ordinary 'user thing' is an extremely virilant disease.
Unless you can quantify any of this then I'm afraid you've proved my point. In reality, telling people that it is a default on a few distros is probably better reasoning. At least you can quantify that in terms people can understand and can use to compare. In reality, all you're telling users is "I know Gnome is extremely limited if you from the OS X and Windows worlds, but hey, it's clean, simple, features confuse you anyway and it's better than that KDE thing that has clutter......and various other things that will confuse you."
Alas, this kind of reasoning is just going to come unstuck, and if Gnome is the face of desktop Linux as some people believe, then small wonder free desktops haven't got anywhere. You can't sell desktops to people based on a lie. If it hasn't got the features then it hasn't got the features people have in Windows and OS X. You can't butter this up in some sort of clean, simple and clutter lie.
Methinks that there are too many corporate interests here that are at odds with the open source world they purport to want to be in, and that he, and some others, don't know how to separate the two.