Like OSX? I don't know, I think that would honestly just lower the barrier for lower-cost linux solutions. I really don't think it's in their best interests to train everyone in the art of UNIX just to see them leave over to the free solution. Remember, cheap DOS beat expensive but superior Mac, and the two weren't even vaguely related.
The thing I hate about the whole "retraining" argument is that it's a one-shot. You only need to retrain someone in the system once, and then they're good to go. Secretaries didn't always know Windows and Word, they had to be retrained in it at some point. And the retraining is aggregate. Once people start, other people hop on and the growth effect means you don't have to retrain employees later.
I'm sure that, at some point, people will really start to decide that the retraining will be worthwhile and start to move. That will continue to grow and once it reaches a critical mass everyone will be trained in linux the way they are all trained in Windows now. We're seeing the very early point in the curve right now (1.5% desktop from the article?) but that'll grow and overcome its inertia. Retraining only has to be done once per employee, and one day it won't even be an issue any more.
No shit. Mod my ass down. I got suckered like a lot of people. I don't happen to work at MIT, and I never bothered with a search (of course, the/. editors didn't either, so I'm in good company). The whole thing should have sounded too good to be true, and I should have realized it from my own post, talking about everyone having thought about this but no one having any idea as to how to do it.
Ah well, fuck it. I can still dream that someone will come up with a good 3d GUI one day...
Well, here it finally is. We've been waiting for how long now for a big clean sweep of the PC? Throwing out everything from the file/folder/desktop heirarchy to plain-text formatting is a fascinating move, one that I'm sure we've all thought about at least one time or another, but had no way of going about it. I really hope this pans out.
The immediate problems that I see are
The UI will scare people. Unfamiliar == Scary.
Hardware support. Hopefully drivers will get out there fast.
Very new programming model. People can't build off of years of UNIX experience as with linux.
People like what they've got, be it windows, linux, mac, or both. Change is scary.
Is the VM slow? Probably not, but we won't know until it's out.
That said, I really hope these hurdles can be overcome. I'm betting ideas from this will be incorporated in to the more traditional OS's in the long run, but who knows? I'm certaintly going to check it out and maybe give it a spin on a spare partition (if that's even possible yet). A 3d GUI! I can't wait.
I agree with this entirely. I honestly think that X should sit on top of the frame buffer, and I see no reason why it shouldn't. You could still have the X protocol that allows everything we know and love about X (network transparency, lots of apps, etc) and dump the stuff we hate (the drivers, suid root, configuration, "slow", "bloated").
X as a protocol should be separated out from actual hardware level display by having a single X server make all the kernel calls. As you said, hardware interface should happen only at the kernel level, and the fact that it doesn't currently is really poor design. There's no reason to chuck X entirely, but to remove many of the dependencies that we have on the XFree project would be a major bonus.
I think the reason for all this X vs. FB bickering is that people are forgetting that X isn't XFree, and that we can have our cake and eat it too by simply breaking up the tasks that XFree is responsible for. XFree is so huge (not bloated, just big) that it's overwhelming. Small is beautiful is the UNIX philosophy, and the fact that so much revolves around X is a major break with that. Putting the hardware where it belongs will clean things up to a major point. I think this needs to happen, and I hope it does. It'll be a major shift for everyone, but it'll be worth it.
Yeah, I saw this too. It's too bad, but maybe one day they'll actually put lilo's functionality in to this. Lilo has definitely gotten better as of late, but it's one of those continual-thorn-in-the-sides of the whole linux experience. This would definitely help matters, especially with newbies.
But users can get the features they want by paying OS programmers, e.g., by buying (favorite brandname) Linux or *BSD and/or service agreements.
Or just asking the developer to implement the feature. Ever hear of a wishlist bug? Granted, your average user wouldn't ever file one, but they could look in the "about" box of a program and see the author's name and email, and write to them asking for/about a feature. More advanced users can get on mailing lists and actively participate without writing a single line of code.
And you know what? They'll actually be heard and most likely responded to.
This very personal aspect of the whole model is something I think people tend to forget, that you can come in to direct contact with the authors. You don't necessarily have to write any code as a user, the same way you don't have to write any code to get features in closed-source stuff either. In both, it depends on what the developers want to provide. The difference is that in the closed-source world, if they say No then you're screwed, whereas in the open world you always have other options.
I don't know about "complex calculations", but the extreme wealth of effective Free Software shows that the model does work, and that many "someone"'s are, in fact, writing all these algorithms. Unless you think multiple kernels, a complex network-transparent windowing environment, a high performance/highly configurable webserver, multiple scripting languages, 2 major desktop environments, 3 office suites, and a whole buttload of other apps don't count as "complex". These apps all work, and will continue to work. People will continue to write them even if they don't have profit motives.
Not everyone is in it for the money, and not everyone requires a PHD to feel like they can reach some goal in this world. There's plenty of work still to be done that doesn't require a doctoral level of education in computer science to write. While Free Software won't solve everything, it doesn't necessarily have to.
It's Free Software, Act Accordingly
on
Five Years of KDE
·
· Score: 2
Ok, fair enough on the labels/tooltips. However, most everyone knows about the tooltips and they do serve their purpose. Granted, they're not as intuitive as labels, but they are still there.
And on the subject of turning features on and off. Once again, the source is there for you. If you think you can do a better job with it, change it. Just do it. It's not hard to swap in some pixmaps with labels on them. Wouldn't require much at all. Granted, this isn't what most users are supposed to do, but since you are so enlightened (and I agree, making buttons with labels is probably a good thing for the default) then why don't you just do it? They can't stop you, nor would they try to. They may just welcome your work.
Rather than berating people on the nature of the project they create and give away for free, why not actually try and contribute? Offering helpful suggestions is a perfectly acceptable thing to do, granted, but it doesn't guarantee you anything. Do the work. I can't stress that enough. The community thrives on this, and KDE and other projects NEED the help that you can provide. This isn't just in terms of bitching about Fitt's law, it's actually implementing. Go create another default profile with all those settings that you want turned on by default. It's right there on the initial bootup, pick your profile, modify from there.
Seriously, I don't understand your mentality at all. While I do fully understand your feeling that all your insights are met with defensiveness from the community, what I don't understand is this feeling that you can just tell people what to do with their projects and seriously expect them to listen. These people pour their time and energy in to a project that they give away to you, and you just want to stand their and whine about some settings that aren't on by default? Do it yourself. Make the profile. Make your KDE distro. Make your Linux distro. Just do it, but quit bitching. Hell, have you even filed a wishlist bug against this stuff? I don't see any bug filed to get labels in to the buttons.
What I'm trying to get across without sounding too rude is that this not a spectator sport. You play by participating. KDE wants your help, but you've actually got to do something. You have complete power to do what you will with the project (within GPL limits of course) and you should do something with that power. File the bug, or just fix it yourself. That's what the whole idea is, and that's why KDE has made it for 5 years.
Why did you mod him as troll? Trolling is senseless bashing, but this guy has some serious points and backs them with proper information.
You're narrowing the definition too much.
From the jargon file:
troll:/v.,n./ [From the Usenet group
alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on {Usenet}
designed to attract predictable responses or {flame}s. Derives
from the phrase "trolling for {newbie}s" which in turn comes
from mainstream "trolling", a style of fishing in which one
trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The
well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and
flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they
already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and
experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't
fall for the joke, you get to be in on it.
Some people claim that the troll is properly a narrower category
than {flame bait}, that a troll is categorized by containing
some assertion that is wrong but not overtly controversial.
Yes, I'm going to argue with you on this. What the hell are you talking about?
They still don't label toolbar buttons
Sure they do. I don't know what apps you're using, but I just did a spot check on five fairly important apps: konqueror, kdict, kword, kate, and kmail. All of them had their toolbar buttons had tooltips labeling what they did.
They still have the same ridiculously small buttons that have ridiculously slow access times and icons that are so small they don't mean a damn thing.
The icon size can be adjusted. All the icons, such as disk types, folders, printing, etc. all make perfect sense to me. They look much like what they represent. Which icons are you specifically talking about?
You try to tell these people about something like Fitts Law but they really don't want to hear that.
Um... how exactly do you want to apply Fitt's Law? The mac-style option to have a single menu bar that one can easily reach is in KDE. The main menu that you use, the K menu, is in the bottom left corner of the screen by default. And you can set any mouse button you want to pop up your app menu, further minimizing the distance to that option (I love that feature).
All in all though, the KDE team seems to be less interested in providing a desktop that is optimized towards Fitt's Law than in providing one that people are already comfortable with. That's their decision, and if you don't like it, the options I mentioned are there for you, as is the source for you to hack yourself.
I agree, this is a major step and I'm glad to see that he's looking to it. Not only is he looking to have things be automatic, but he wants to get away from the whole "device manager" idea, which is what pervades windows. While he does say he doesn't care about the competition, he is trying to make Linux the best Linux it can be, and that will involve beating the competitors in some areas like this (hopefully!)
Personally, this is my biggest complaint about the kernel as is. It's gotten much much better over time, but once it's really handled for the user it'll be one more relatively large hurdle that a user won't have to overcome. While Mandrake et al. have done a great job on autoconfiguration during install, things like adding a new CD-burner are often done later. It all obviously fits in to his notion (that I agree with) that the innovation will happen in the userspace, among projects like KDE. Autodetection and loading will be another kernel contribution to userspace enchancements.
I'm just glad to see that, while most people gripe about what Linux can't do right now, the people who are actually doing the work are thinking about what it's going to be doing soon. This may frustrate people who just want a perfect system to appear magically before their eyes (as though Windows just showed up in its current form on the day they bought their computer) it'll wind up satisfying a lot of people in the long run. Makes it much more exciting to watch too.
Karma whoring or not, I appreciate it quite a bit. Anyone who actually has some interest in actually looking at what the cracked genome actually entails wants this sort of info. Thanks for the links!
Re:Why MS should be running scared.
on
ZDNet Reviews KOffice
·
· Score: 3, Informative
I've never used it, but GnuCash seems to be a pretty popular Quicken alternative.
I thought the article was very fair. It didn't seem to expect the world out of KOffice, and made the point that it was a volunteer effort.
Having recently fired up KOffice for the first time since the 1.1 release, I've got to say I'm really happy with where it's going. The team has done a great job on getting component embedding working (although it crashed on me when I started pushing it around a bit) and I really think this will shape up to be an incredibly powerful suite.
Of course, these things don't happen overnight. It took Linux about 8 or 9 years to start gaining more widespread acceptance in the server area. KOffice is a tremendous project, and it'll take a long time to get to the point where it can compete with MS Office. Remember, software like this doesn't just happen overnight, it has to evolve. MS Office has had over a decade to get to where it is. I have a feeling we'll start seeing KOffice as a real alternative to MS in a few years.
I just wanted to throw out another note of appreciation to you guys./. was my primary source for news on Tuesday, since I don't have a TV at home. You guys did a fantastic job and we all are indebted to you for the great work you've done. Thanks again!
I completely forgot to send my best hopes and wishes for your friend. I didn't mean to belittle your article at all, if that's how it came across (I didn't expect it to get modded up really) and my hopes go with him and everyone else.
And yet it's still the people that matter, not the technology. We all know that, and despite this being a site for nerds, this is stuff that Matters. I don't know anyone in New York, and I'm all the way out here in California, but every five minutes I feel like I'm going to break out in tears just from what I've heard and read. I am scared, saddened, and humbled by this today.
This isn't Armageddon. That sounds too much like the stupid movie and it cheapens the fact that someone somewhere is responsible for this. This is the real thing, and it's not about the planes or the black boxes or the television. It's about the people, because that's what Matters.
Windows is just a great interface from a great and innovative company that invented personal computing.
Does this line scare anyone else? This is exactly the kind of doom we were scared of hearing. Saying Microsoft invented personal computing goes hand in hand with "Five years from now people will be saying Microsoft invented the web browser." Of course, this line could just mark this post as a blatant troll, but the fact that it's there at all really scares me.
Who says they have to sell it? I can think of one major operating system company that doesn't manufacture a web browser of their own, but licenses IE instead. Why couldn't Microsoft OS license IE from Microsoft Apps?
We would see how competitive is that "Free" product.
A lot of potential good can come out of separating apps and OS.
Office can finally be separated out from the OS. This would not only allow for it's port to other platforms like Linux (minor gain if even possible) but it would simply take away a major chunk of Office's monopoly power. OEM's could choose, since they wouldn't get the discount for including Office with Windows, based on price. This would allow something like Star Office or Corel to make some headway. This could, in turn, drive MS to actually innovate a little in Office, rather than give us more crap that we don't need like in the last two "upgrades".
Other apps can gain some headway in other platforms. Exchange and Outlook servers (same thing?) can be ported to other OS's. As could IIS. People who wanted these apps could have them on other platforms, like Mac OSX Server for instance, allowing for more choice in the enterprise market.
Linux and other OS's could make some headway in OEM's inventory because Office wouldn't be tied to Windows, providing the double lock-in punch. Factor in other apps and alternate OS's have more of a chance. Hell, Be could have possibly pulled off something in that climate.
Those are the few that I can think of right off the top of my head. I'm sure there are others, but Office and Windows complement each other in such important ways... how many times do we hear about how the Linux Office suites aren't good enough, and if it weren't for Office people would move over? Well, because Office and Windows are pretty much bundled together, they represent a massive power block. Splitting the company would cleave this block in half.
Why was the dot-com crash such a bad thing? It, as you mentioned in the beginnning of your post (and pretty much ignored later in favor of throwing out borg and interest rate references) most of the dot-com companies were built on a bubble of a bad idea. Some were bought out and most floundered.
But did they deserve to be in business if they couldn't make a profit? My answer is no.
You can blame it all you want on the DOJ trial and interest rates, but when your entire business plan rests on being profitable enough to survive until one company buys you out, then you've got some bigger issues there.
The Valley is considered America's number one profit center and economy driver, and when nearly all of said area is beholden to a single company from afar, you have to question whether or not this is a good thing. Obviously, many people think not. Netscape/Sun/Other Java people were trying to change that.
Java was not going to be a replacement for MS-DOS or whatever else. JavaOS, while much hyped back in the day, turned out to be shit, and most anyone could have guessed it. Java needs an OS under it, the difference is that the OS doesn't have to be Windows any more. While this was aimed straight at Windows' heart, Microsoft was able to leverage their power unfairly in ways that Netscape was totally incapable of doing. This is why they were found guilty in the trial. I don't disagree that they should have provided a free competing product to deal with the threat. I do also acknowledge that they used their near infinite power over the desktop computing landscape, in everything from licenses to integration to proprietary extensions, to compete unfairly with Netscape and Java.
When a company has this much power, and can stamp out anyone who poses a threat this easily, it is time for it to be dealt with. The brightest, biggest, and best companies in computing, all unified behind java, couldn't beat Microsoft. And you want to tell me this is a "bogus issue"?
No company should hold this much power. No company should ever think "What is good for us is good for America," which is exactly what Microsoft has gotten to thinking. No country should hold them most important and vibrant sector of America's economy entirely within its thrall.
You want to blame the DOJ trial for the dot-com crash which was bound to happen anyway. I say the DOJ trial put things in perspective. The whole thing really started when Netscape itself was the darling of the stock market, and then everything internet would be huge, riding on Netscape's coattails. Microsoft killed this vision with Netscape, putting a cold, hard dose of reality in those VC's eyes. The dot-com bubble needed to burst, and Microsoft needs to be regulated.
You know the original demo for the N64, the one they incorporated in to Mario64, where you could play with Mario's face and distort it and tweak it? I think Microsoft should do the same demo for the XBox with Bill G's face and maybe Steve Ballmer's as well.
Think of how much fun that would be to play with! Way cooler than the Mario demo. Plus, it'd be a funny PR move, showing they have a sense of humor.
I also hope they don't keep the name as HomeStation. It sounds like something out of a military movie: "Echo troop to home station, do you copy?" Brrr! Call it something cozy and consumer-friendly, like... I don't know... Microsoft Bob.
Slashdot Mirror
Like OSX? I don't know, I think that would honestly just lower the barrier for lower-cost linux solutions. I really don't think it's in their best interests to train everyone in the art of UNIX just to see them leave over to the free solution. Remember, cheap DOS beat expensive but superior Mac, and the two weren't even vaguely related.
The thing I hate about the whole "retraining" argument is that it's a one-shot. You only need to retrain someone in the system once, and then they're good to go. Secretaries didn't always know Windows and Word, they had to be retrained in it at some point. And the retraining is aggregate. Once people start, other people hop on and the growth effect means you don't have to retrain employees later.
I'm sure that, at some point, people will really start to decide that the retraining will be worthwhile and start to move. That will continue to grow and once it reaches a critical mass everyone will be trained in linux the way they are all trained in Windows now. We're seeing the very early point in the curve right now (1.5% desktop from the article?) but that'll grow and overcome its inertia. Retraining only has to be done once per employee, and one day it won't even be an issue any more.
No shit. Mod my ass down. I got suckered like a lot of people. I don't happen to work at MIT, and I never bothered with a search (of course, the /. editors didn't either, so I'm in good company). The whole thing should have sounded too good to be true, and I should have realized it from my own post, talking about everyone having thought about this but no one having any idea as to how to do it.
Ah well, fuck it. I can still dream that someone will come up with a good 3d GUI one day...
The immediate problems that I see are
- The UI will scare people. Unfamiliar == Scary.
- Hardware support. Hopefully drivers will get out there fast.
- Very new programming model. People can't build off of years of UNIX experience as with linux.
- People like what they've got, be it windows, linux, mac, or both. Change is scary.
- Is the VM slow? Probably not, but we won't know until it's out.
That said, I really hope these hurdles can be overcome. I'm betting ideas from this will be incorporated in to the more traditional OS's in the long run, but who knows? I'm certaintly going to check it out and maybe give it a spin on a spare partition (if that's even possible yet). A 3d GUI! I can't wait.I agree with this entirely. I honestly think that X should sit on top of the frame buffer, and I see no reason why it shouldn't. You could still have the X protocol that allows everything we know and love about X (network transparency, lots of apps, etc) and dump the stuff we hate (the drivers, suid root, configuration, "slow", "bloated").
X as a protocol should be separated out from actual hardware level display by having a single X server make all the kernel calls. As you said, hardware interface should happen only at the kernel level, and the fact that it doesn't currently is really poor design. There's no reason to chuck X entirely, but to remove many of the dependencies that we have on the XFree project would be a major bonus.
I think the reason for all this X vs. FB bickering is that people are forgetting that X isn't XFree, and that we can have our cake and eat it too by simply breaking up the tasks that XFree is responsible for. XFree is so huge (not bloated, just big) that it's overwhelming. Small is beautiful is the UNIX philosophy, and the fact that so much revolves around X is a major break with that. Putting the hardware where it belongs will clean things up to a major point. I think this needs to happen, and I hope it does. It'll be a major shift for everyone, but it'll be worth it.
Yeah, I saw this too. It's too bad, but maybe one day they'll actually put lilo's functionality in to this. Lilo has definitely gotten better as of late, but it's one of those continual-thorn-in-the-sides of the whole linux experience. This would definitely help matters, especially with newbies.
it's a feature.
Or just asking the developer to implement the feature. Ever hear of a wishlist bug? Granted, your average user wouldn't ever file one, but they could look in the "about" box of a program and see the author's name and email, and write to them asking for/about a feature. More advanced users can get on mailing lists and actively participate without writing a single line of code.
And you know what? They'll actually be heard and most likely responded to.
This very personal aspect of the whole model is something I think people tend to forget, that you can come in to direct contact with the authors. You don't necessarily have to write any code as a user, the same way you don't have to write any code to get features in closed-source stuff either. In both, it depends on what the developers want to provide. The difference is that in the closed-source world, if they say No then you're screwed, whereas in the open world you always have other options.
I don't know about "complex calculations", but the extreme wealth of effective Free Software shows that the model does work, and that many "someone"'s are, in fact, writing all these algorithms. Unless you think multiple kernels, a complex network-transparent windowing environment, a high performance/highly configurable webserver, multiple scripting languages, 2 major desktop environments, 3 office suites, and a whole buttload of other apps don't count as "complex". These apps all work, and will continue to work. People will continue to write them even if they don't have profit motives.
Not everyone is in it for the money, and not everyone requires a PHD to feel like they can reach some goal in this world. There's plenty of work still to be done that doesn't require a doctoral level of education in computer science to write. While Free Software won't solve everything, it doesn't necessarily have to.
Ok, fair enough on the labels/tooltips. However, most everyone knows about the tooltips and they do serve their purpose. Granted, they're not as intuitive as labels, but they are still there.
And on the subject of turning features on and off. Once again, the source is there for you. If you think you can do a better job with it, change it. Just do it. It's not hard to swap in some pixmaps with labels on them. Wouldn't require much at all. Granted, this isn't what most users are supposed to do, but since you are so enlightened (and I agree, making buttons with labels is probably a good thing for the default) then why don't you just do it? They can't stop you, nor would they try to. They may just welcome your work.
Rather than berating people on the nature of the project they create and give away for free, why not actually try and contribute? Offering helpful suggestions is a perfectly acceptable thing to do, granted, but it doesn't guarantee you anything. Do the work. I can't stress that enough. The community thrives on this, and KDE and other projects NEED the help that you can provide. This isn't just in terms of bitching about Fitt's law, it's actually implementing. Go create another default profile with all those settings that you want turned on by default. It's right there on the initial bootup, pick your profile, modify from there.
Seriously, I don't understand your mentality at all. While I do fully understand your feeling that all your insights are met with defensiveness from the community, what I don't understand is this feeling that you can just tell people what to do with their projects and seriously expect them to listen. These people pour their time and energy in to a project that they give away to you, and you just want to stand their and whine about some settings that aren't on by default? Do it yourself. Make the profile. Make your KDE distro. Make your Linux distro. Just do it, but quit bitching. Hell, have you even filed a wishlist bug against this stuff? I don't see any bug filed to get labels in to the buttons.
What I'm trying to get across without sounding too rude is that this not a spectator sport. You play by participating. KDE wants your help, but you've actually got to do something. You have complete power to do what you will with the project (within GPL limits of course) and you should do something with that power. File the bug, or just fix it yourself. That's what the whole idea is, and that's why KDE has made it for 5 years.
You're narrowing the definition too much.
From the jargon file:
troll:
alt.folklore.urban] To utter a posting on {Usenet}
designed to attract predictable responses or {flame}s. Derives
from the phrase "trolling for {newbie}s" which in turn comes
from mainstream "trolling", a style of fishing in which one
trails bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The
well-constructed troll is a post that induces lots of newbies and
flamers to make themselves look even more clueless than they
already do, while subtly conveying to the more savvy and
experienced that it is in fact a deliberate troll. If you don't
fall for the joke, you get to be in on it.
Some people claim that the troll is properly a narrower category
than {flame bait}, that a troll is categorized by containing
some assertion that is wrong but not overtly controversial.
Sure they do. I don't know what apps you're using, but I just did a spot check on five fairly important apps: konqueror, kdict, kword, kate, and kmail. All of them had their toolbar buttons had tooltips labeling what they did.
The icon size can be adjusted. All the icons, such as disk types, folders, printing, etc. all make perfect sense to me. They look much like what they represent. Which icons are you specifically talking about?
Um... how exactly do you want to apply Fitt's Law? The mac-style option to have a single menu bar that one can easily reach is in KDE. The main menu that you use, the K menu, is in the bottom left corner of the screen by default. And you can set any mouse button you want to pop up your app menu, further minimizing the distance to that option (I love that feature).
All in all though, the KDE team seems to be less interested in providing a desktop that is optimized towards Fitt's Law than in providing one that people are already comfortable with. That's their decision, and if you don't like it, the options I mentioned are there for you, as is the source for you to hack yourself.
I agree, this is a major step and I'm glad to see that he's looking to it. Not only is he looking to have things be automatic, but he wants to get away from the whole "device manager" idea, which is what pervades windows. While he does say he doesn't care about the competition, he is trying to make Linux the best Linux it can be, and that will involve beating the competitors in some areas like this (hopefully!)
Personally, this is my biggest complaint about the kernel as is. It's gotten much much better over time, but once it's really handled for the user it'll be one more relatively large hurdle that a user won't have to overcome. While Mandrake et al. have done a great job on autoconfiguration during install, things like adding a new CD-burner are often done later. It all obviously fits in to his notion (that I agree with) that the innovation will happen in the userspace, among projects like KDE. Autodetection and loading will be another kernel contribution to userspace enchancements.
I'm just glad to see that, while most people gripe about what Linux can't do right now, the people who are actually doing the work are thinking about what it's going to be doing soon. This may frustrate people who just want a perfect system to appear magically before their eyes (as though Windows just showed up in its current form on the day they bought their computer) it'll wind up satisfying a lot of people in the long run. Makes it much more exciting to watch too.
Karma whoring or not, I appreciate it quite a bit. Anyone who actually has some interest in actually looking at what the cracked genome actually entails wants this sort of info. Thanks for the links!
I've never used it, but GnuCash seems to be a pretty popular Quicken alternative.
I thought the article was very fair. It didn't seem to expect the world out of KOffice, and made the point that it was a volunteer effort.
Having recently fired up KOffice for the first time since the 1.1 release, I've got to say I'm really happy with where it's going. The team has done a great job on getting component embedding working (although it crashed on me when I started pushing it around a bit) and I really think this will shape up to be an incredibly powerful suite.
Of course, these things don't happen overnight. It took Linux about 8 or 9 years to start gaining more widespread acceptance in the server area. KOffice is a tremendous project, and it'll take a long time to get to the point where it can compete with MS Office. Remember, software like this doesn't just happen overnight, it has to evolve. MS Office has had over a decade to get to where it is. I have a feeling we'll start seeing KOffice as a real alternative to MS in a few years.
Your mileage may vary on this one.
For me, Mozilla is a hell of a lot more stable than IE. IE crashes on me not infrequently, and it usually means a reboot.
The fact that I use Mozilla a ton under linux and IE in those relatively infrequent times I boot in to Windows really swings it for me.
I just wanted to throw out another note of appreciation to you guys. /. was my primary source for news on Tuesday, since I don't have a TV at home. You guys did a fantastic job and we all are indebted to you for the great work you've done. Thanks again!
I completely forgot to send my best hopes and wishes for your friend. I didn't mean to belittle your article at all, if that's how it came across (I didn't expect it to get modded up really) and my hopes go with him and everyone else.
And yet it's still the people that matter, not the technology. We all know that, and despite this being a site for nerds, this is stuff that Matters. I don't know anyone in New York, and I'm all the way out here in California, but every five minutes I feel like I'm going to break out in tears just from what I've heard and read. I am scared, saddened, and humbled by this today.
This isn't Armageddon. That sounds too much like the stupid movie and it cheapens the fact that someone somewhere is responsible for this. This is the real thing, and it's not about the planes or the black boxes or the television. It's about the people, because that's what Matters.
Does this line scare anyone else? This is exactly the kind of doom we were scared of hearing. Saying Microsoft invented personal computing goes hand in hand with "Five years from now people will be saying Microsoft invented the web browser." Of course, this line could just mark this post as a blatant troll, but the fact that it's there at all really scares me.
Who says they have to sell it? I can think of one major operating system company that doesn't manufacture a web browser of their own, but licenses IE instead. Why couldn't Microsoft OS license IE from Microsoft Apps?
We would see how competitive is that "Free" product.
Those are the few that I can think of right off the top of my head. I'm sure there are others, but Office and Windows complement each other in such important ways... how many times do we hear about how the Linux Office suites aren't good enough, and if it weren't for Office people would move over? Well, because Office and Windows are pretty much bundled together, they represent a massive power block. Splitting the company would cleave this block in half.
Why was the dot-com crash such a bad thing? It, as you mentioned in the beginnning of your post (and pretty much ignored later in favor of throwing out borg and interest rate references) most of the dot-com companies were built on a bubble of a bad idea. Some were bought out and most floundered.
But did they deserve to be in business if they couldn't make a profit? My answer is no.
You can blame it all you want on the DOJ trial and interest rates, but when your entire business plan rests on being profitable enough to survive until one company buys you out, then you've got some bigger issues there.
The Valley is considered America's number one profit center and economy driver, and when nearly all of said area is beholden to a single company from afar, you have to question whether or not this is a good thing. Obviously, many people think not. Netscape/Sun/Other Java people were trying to change that.
Java was not going to be a replacement for MS-DOS or whatever else. JavaOS, while much hyped back in the day, turned out to be shit, and most anyone could have guessed it. Java needs an OS under it, the difference is that the OS doesn't have to be Windows any more. While this was aimed straight at Windows' heart, Microsoft was able to leverage their power unfairly in ways that Netscape was totally incapable of doing. This is why they were found guilty in the trial. I don't disagree that they should have provided a free competing product to deal with the threat. I do also acknowledge that they used their near infinite power over the desktop computing landscape, in everything from licenses to integration to proprietary extensions, to compete unfairly with Netscape and Java.
When a company has this much power, and can stamp out anyone who poses a threat this easily, it is time for it to be dealt with. The brightest, biggest, and best companies in computing, all unified behind java, couldn't beat Microsoft. And you want to tell me this is a "bogus issue"?
No company should hold this much power. No company should ever think "What is good for us is good for America," which is exactly what Microsoft has gotten to thinking. No country should hold them most important and vibrant sector of America's economy entirely within its thrall.
You want to blame the DOJ trial for the dot-com crash which was bound to happen anyway. I say the DOJ trial put things in perspective. The whole thing really started when Netscape itself was the darling of the stock market, and then everything internet would be huge, riding on Netscape's coattails. Microsoft killed this vision with Netscape, putting a cold, hard dose of reality in those VC's eyes. The dot-com bubble needed to burst, and Microsoft needs to be regulated.
Damn it, I wish Microsoft had thought of this.
You know the original demo for the N64, the one they incorporated in to Mario64, where you could play with Mario's face and distort it and tweak it? I think Microsoft should do the same demo for the XBox with Bill G's face and maybe Steve Ballmer's as well.
Think of how much fun that would be to play with! Way cooler than the Mario demo. Plus, it'd be a funny PR move, showing they have a sense of humor.
I also hope they don't keep the name as HomeStation. It sounds like something out of a military movie: "Echo troop to home station, do you copy?" Brrr! Call it something cozy and consumer-friendly, like... I don't know... Microsoft Bob.