Agreed. Understanding usability is a totally different discipline to coding. One can easily do either without being able to do the other. The problem is that proper solutions to usability problems need proper foundations laid. Complaints about the foundations of usability tend to fall on deaf ears in the Free Software community -- certainly those who care are in the minority.
I wonder how many 'designers' who 'can't code' are employed by Apple to 'design' their user interface without 'coding' it. We'll never know exactly, but I suspect it's quite a few, and the Apple is the one to look to as an example of how it's done properly. (Sure there are many places where it can be improved, but there is less room for improvement in the Mac OS than on either Linux or Windows.)
Personally, I was driven to Linux by frustration with Windows, and to the Mac by frustration with Linux. I've experienced all three, still run Linux a bit, but when it comes to getting things done, I use the Mac. Linux must catch up if it wants to be competitive.
I'll point out an example from the world of software synthesisers. Take a look at Rob Papen's Blue, Albino or Predator. They are excellent synthesisers. The point is, Papen is the sound designer and the synthesisers are designed so as to facilitate his designing of the vast collection of factory patches for them (based on what's possible of course.)
In the world of Free Software, things are very different -- those who can design the user interface are not strongly listened to when designing how the user interface libraries should work. Basically, a programmer writes what he/she thinks is good enough, other programmers join in, but when the designer's requirements run contrary to the original direction of the code, resistance is met. This is a major problem, since those most capable of designing effective user interfaces don't get to do so, and those more suited to the coding side of things have to do make-shift user interface designing according to their ideas of how a user interface should work or what is easy to code.
Free software companies should take time to stand back from the process, ask the question: what are we trying to do? and what is the most effective way to accomplish those goals? The problem is that it is effectively beyond the power of an individual person in the free software world to influence things unless they have sufficient time and expertise to code examples of what they want.
Take the use of Dreamweaver in web design -- it lets you get a pretty prototype, but falls far behind hand-coding when it comes to putting the final web page together.
Similarly, you can get a quick approximation of a document (save the equations) in Word or something, but LaTeX gives a little more precision when it comes to the final version.
I think the reason no-one's come up with a decent visual paradigm for inputting equations efficiently is that it can't be done -- in general the number of discrete choices offered by a GUI is far smaller than what can be accomplished by a few keypresses. The problem is memory.
I for one would welcome a modern LaTeX replacement, but I'd still expect a markup language with programming facilities. Once the learning curve is passed, there just isn't another approach that's as efficient. You can make things much easier for a 'Visual Studio/TextMate' type environment, but the fundamental approach of a markup language is the correct one -- you've just got to learn the thing.
I'm appalled that the FSF could resort to such negative tactics.
They need to be setting a good example if they are to have any chance of convincing people of the importance of free software. This just plays straight into the hands of those that wish to paint free software advocates as over-idealistic zealots with no concern for practicality -- the exact opposite of what a group like the FSF should be doing.
Generally being aware of other directions of thought will, I expect, become more and more important in future -- current directions are getting heavily worked out and it's important to be aware of what might have been missed by the mainstream. Also, a popular science book can be read much more quickly than a serious textbook, so a one-to-one comparison is inappropriate -- read popular stuff for casual-but-enlightening bedtime reading and the more serious textbooks when you're at your best.
It's just like democracy -- you get to choose your own slave master from a choice of professional politicians. Here you have to choose between one big business or another -- and if all big businesses pander to the RIAA, you're stuffed. You don't really have that much choice.
There are a great many 'science believers' that lack proper understanding, overapply logic without understanding its limitations, do likewise with statistics and a great many other fallacies, and such people may be looked at (and desire to be looked at) as serious scientists. Such people are a far greater problem, as is the irrational belief that modern science is the one true way of thinking (I'd advocate it myself as a good way of thinking, but would stop short of calling it the only way to the truth: that's religious dogmatism in disguise.)
In any case, physicists still can't get all their laws to work together properly and mathematicians know that they can't have consistent and complete foundations to their discipline, and there are a great many examples of deep and insightful though in other areas of human endeavour that science has yet to delve into, yet comprehend, so again it is too soon to call any other kind of though unreasonable.
That said, I myself believe that astrology should be taken with a rather large truckload of salt... I mean, the idea that one 12th of the population of the earth, half a billion people, have the same future prospects is nonsense (so out go the star-sign based methods.) The idea that one 365th of the population has the same future is again nonsense (so out goes the date of birth approach.)
Essentially, the mind exerts an influence on the world around us, and we intuitively consider our 'extended body' to be those things over which we feel we have a direct influence. In this sense, the notion of a distinction between body and tool disappears: merely there is a distinction between what the mind has direct influence over and what it does not.
(Just my rather abstract view... I often like to question basic assumptions that we naturally make, like the identification between self and body.)
Caveat: I'm not an AI researcher either, and what I do know of AI is enough to convince me never to go into the area in any serious way.
The problem with the "emergent intelligence" from lots of "neural networks" approach is even if it works you often don't really know why it works (or whether it's really working the way you want) - it's more a probability thing.
The idea is that the probability thing _is_ the reason why it works: intelligence goes way beyond the abilities of reductive reasoning to figure it out (for combinatorial reasons if nothing else.)
The idea that a neural network given a "large enough corpus" can resemble a human being might be true. But a "long enough dead end" could look like a highway. Then again we are probably dead ends too, and so it's more a matter of which one goes on for longer;).
i agree here - the discrete basis for a neural network will limit its ultimate abilities to something well short of human intelligence.
My other objection to such approaches is, if you wanted a nonhuman intelligence from neural networks that you don't really understand (the workings of), you can always go get one from the pet store.
But you can't reprogram a hamster!
As it is the Biotech people probably have a better chance of making smarter AI than the computer scientists working on AI - who appear to be still stuck at a primitive level. But both may still not understand why:).
I'd suggest that they both have essentially zero chance of success given current methods. Thus the notion of better has problems.
Without a leap in the science of Intelligence/Consciousness, it would then be something like the field of Alchemy in the old days.
But without the ability to actually observe intelligence/consciousness, rather than just its gross macroscopic real-world effects, there will be no science to have a leap in. Only mystical traditions have approached the notion of such observation and nobody has looked too far at a fusion of the western science and eastern mystic traditions, something that would be beyond wierdness if anybody ever did.
It has long been my opinion that what you need is something that automatically creates models of stuff - simulations. Once you get it trying to recursively model itself (consciousness) and the observed world at the same time AND predict "what might be the best thing to do" then you might start to get somewhere.
A human brain loaded up with mathematics, logic, physics and philosophy is by far the best device I've come across for doing this, and nothing else really comes close.
Sure pattern recognition is important, but it's just a way for the Modeller to create a better model of the observed world. It is naturally advantageous for an entity to be able to model and predict other entities, and if the other entities are doing the same, you have a need to self model.
Patterns are fundamental, and thus so is the need to recognise them. It is far more than just a way for the Modeller to create a better model of the observed world, though that is one powerful application. Feedback is another fundamental notion, as is the harnessing of complexity and, potentially, chaos.
So my question is how do you set stuff up so that it automatically starts modelling and predicting what it observes (including self observations)?;)
You've got me there: I just use my brain for that sort of thing;-) (And biologists still don't know everything about how one of those starts up yet...)
Caveat: what I'm trying to put across is very hard to put into writing. Apologies for the inherent inaccuracies in what follows.
The main problem of creationism is, of course, definition 2 that you cite: the literal interpretation of the story of creation in Genesis. Personally I don't believe that this was ever the intention of those who wrote it. A lesser problem is the rejection of evolution since things can be observed to evolve in nature as they exist today. What is less of a problem is the rejection of what I'd call 'total evolution', the notion that gradual evolution and nothing else is how the world has come to the state in which we find it. One finds all sorts of philosophical problems if one goes in that direction.
If one truly understands that story, truly understands evolution and the nature of intelligence, I believe that they will come to the paradoxical conclusion that creation, intelligent design and evolution are in fact the same thing, just viewed differently. (For example, evolution, once you look beyond the basics, has in inherent intelligence to how it progresses - the combinatorial possibilities of blind selection together with feedback on the scale of the earth go well beyond those of the human brain for example. Taken to the extreme, one would posit an ultimate intelligence, which in a sense the eastern religions do, with the concepts of the Tao, and suchlike... though the thinking behind what I'm saying is rather hard to put into writing, so what I've written here is inherently inaccurate.)
It's desperation for success. This drives people to want that extra 10% out of themselves and they'll do anything to get it rather than learning to be content with who they are. Using 'mind-enhancing' drugs may bring brief success, but dependence follows and ultimately the person loses themselves.
I'd agree that a bit in moderation is ok, and perhaps quite good (I'm thinking of coffee and tea here).
When they make money, they credit their artists and claim that piracy is stopping them making more money. When they don't make money, they blame piracy. In both cases, they argue for stronger controls regardless of the reailty.
Personally, I buy CDs precisely because it's easy to rip them to my mac and ipod -- I rarely listen to the original CD, but I always purchase music I listen to (except for _legal_ downloads like e.g. RFUGrey002.) If a ban on ripping CDs was stringently enforced, I for one would purchase far fewer CDs.
This is similarly irrelevant. Compression is a way of altering a sound wave, and has nothing to do with the final recording medium. Overcompression is a problem, but this is not an argument for vinyl over CD--it's just a comment on postprocessing techniques
Whilst that is true, the problem is that a typical CD recording available today will be overcompressed whereas a typical vinyl recording won't be. Thus if I want to buy a decent recording, it may well be that the vinyl version is better than the CD version despite what the technical capabilities of the two media may be. That said, if vinyl sales rocket and CD sales plummet, we will most likely see a change in how CDs are mastered -- I expect both media to be around for a long time yet.
Given how the RAM fits into the mac mini, I can see why it's not panel accessible -- you'd have to take the entire side of the mini off! That said, why they don't use good old fashioned screws on the bottom I don't know.
Yeah - 256Mb is too little for Tiger. But after upgrading to 1GB (the max possible in a mini G4) Tiger runs fine for most things. I'm still wondering about Leopard -- I want the new features, but the 'if it ain't broke' mentality seems to be taking priority here.
I fully agree with network sharing support. Also, interoperability across the network with Linux boxes is a disaster so far as I'm concerned. (I tried it but found it to be a hit and miss affair as to whether NFS or SMB connections worked properly. Back in 10.3, accessing a SAMBA share would crash the finder some of the time!)
The.DS_Store problem seems to be well known, but since it is not a problem with mac only networks, I imagine that Apple couldn't care less.
I've yet to try the mac mini on an apple only network, but interoperability with other machines such as my linux box is something I've given up on. It's quicker to send files with a USB key and all else I just work around.
I'd like an 'open command line prompt here' as well, and I dislike the inability to add things to the right-click menus.
The lack of Alt-F etc. shortcuts for accessing menus is my major gripe compared to Windows -- this is one thing I do miss.
Finally, the inability to properly uninstall applications seems to me to be a major oversight on the part of Apple. Sticking everything in/Library or the user's ~/Library is at fault here, as is the apparently user-friendly idea of having self contained apps in the/Applications folder. Having more domains (or whatever you want to call them) so that, e.g. Audio apps could go in one domain (Library+Applications folder) and Office apps in another, possibly with things like Adobe's CS suite in its own private application group would make things easier, but I don't know what the best solution to program organisation is, and I'm sure that neither MacOSX nor Windows have got it right so far.
As a Mac Mini user: 1GB and an external FireWire hard drive make a great difference. Going from 256MB to 1GB shows you where (and where not) the lack of memory slows things down, and upgrading the hard drive shows you what's disk bound (various applications now start quicker.) Basically, a typical OSX setup needs lots of RAM. (IIRC, there are many speed/space tradeoffs that can be made in OS design, and most of these are done in favour of speed at the expense of space requirements in the case of OSX.) At least with the newer mac minis the minimum RAM is 512MB and, compared to 256MB, this alone makes a difference (I've used mac minis with 256MB, 512MB and 1GB of RAM).
IIRC XCode, in its previous guise as Project Center and Interface Builder has had this since before Apple even got hold of Next. Though I may be wrong.
Having used XCode I must say that its a very good way of doing things, though once in a while I'd like to know what's actually going on (i.e. what's in a.nib file and what happens as it is loaded), and XCode tends to hide this. And there's still much that Xcode can learn event from (dare I say it) M$VC.Net.
Anyway, it's a little sad that Objective C is routinely getting dropped from modern distros (e.g. the OpenSuse DVD doesn't even have it as an installable option) and this makes GNUstep (especially GNUstep base IMO) less accessable than it should be. Given the size of GNUstep it should really appear as an optional developer package on most distros.
What you'd need to do is to reimplement GTK and Wine's underlying drawing architectures to use something common. Modifying Win32 to use GTK widgets is rather nontrivial unless I'm very much mistaken. Right now the common denominator is X, and theming and policy isn't implemented at that level.
Nobody creates ANYTHING in isolation. Any non-creative thought in anybody's head is 100% plagiarised from the rest of nature. Any creative thought is merely 99.9999% plagiarised. Just about everything anybody does is learned by copying something or somebody else. That is just the way nature and humanity work.
The language used to write a book is copied from the society that the book is sold to. The settings, themes and ideas of a story are always close to being unoriginal. Anything less and such a story would be too hard to read.
The perception that the author of a work or creation did most of the work in bringing it about is at fault. And basically the current system is a lottery of who gets credited for a given piece of work.
There are many good things worth keeping in GNOME, and many worth changing. Some are foundational issues, and the best way to handle those foundational issues (such as getting Storage implemented and suchlike) is within a fork. I love GNOME (and use KDE under GNOME, rather than the other way around) and wouldn't like to see the GNOME 2 line disturbed too much in the name of progress, yet I wish to see that progress happen.
On a related topic, I'm not up to speed with the details of programming GNOME: in which order should I learn my way round the libraries?
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Agreed. Understanding usability is a totally different discipline to coding. One can easily do either without being able to do the other. The problem is that proper solutions to usability problems need proper foundations laid. Complaints about the foundations of usability tend to fall on deaf ears in the Free Software community -- certainly those who care are in the minority.
I wonder how many 'designers' who 'can't code' are employed by Apple to 'design' their user interface without 'coding' it. We'll never know exactly, but I suspect it's quite a few, and the Apple is the one to look to as an example of how it's done properly. (Sure there are many places where it can be improved, but there is less room for improvement in the Mac OS than on either Linux or Windows.)
Personally, I was driven to Linux by frustration with Windows, and to the Mac by frustration with Linux. I've experienced all three, still run Linux a bit, but when it comes to getting things done, I use the Mac. Linux must catch up if it wants to be competitive.
I'll point out an example from the world of software synthesisers. Take a look at Rob Papen's Blue, Albino or Predator. They are excellent synthesisers. The point is, Papen is the sound designer and the synthesisers are designed so as to facilitate his designing of the vast collection of factory patches for them (based on what's possible of course.)
In the world of Free Software, things are very different -- those who can design the user interface are not strongly listened to when designing how the user interface libraries should work. Basically, a programmer writes what he/she thinks is good enough, other programmers join in, but when the designer's requirements run contrary to the original direction of the code, resistance is met. This is a major problem, since those most capable of designing effective user interfaces don't get to do so, and those more suited to the coding side of things have to do make-shift user interface designing according to their ideas of how a user interface should work or what is easy to code.
Free software companies should take time to stand back from the process, ask the question: what are we trying to do? and what is the most effective way to accomplish those goals? The problem is that it is effectively beyond the power of an individual person in the free software world to influence things unless they have sufficient time and expertise to code examples of what they want.
Take the use of Dreamweaver in web design -- it lets you get a pretty prototype, but falls far behind hand-coding when it comes to putting the final web page together.
Similarly, you can get a quick approximation of a document (save the equations) in Word or something, but LaTeX gives a little more precision when it comes to the final version.
I think the reason no-one's come up with a decent visual paradigm for inputting equations efficiently is that it can't be done -- in general the number of discrete choices offered by a GUI is far smaller than what can be accomplished by a few keypresses. The problem is memory.
I for one would welcome a modern LaTeX replacement, but I'd still expect a markup language with programming facilities. Once the learning curve is passed, there just isn't another approach that's as efficient. You can make things much easier for a 'Visual Studio/TextMate' type environment, but the fundamental approach of a markup language is the correct one -- you've just got to learn the thing.
I'm appalled that the FSF could resort to such negative tactics.
They need to be setting a good example if they are to have any chance of convincing people of the importance of free software. This just plays straight into the hands of those that wish to paint free software advocates as over-idealistic zealots with no concern for practicality -- the exact opposite of what a group like the FSF should be doing.
Generally being aware of other directions of thought will, I expect, become more and more important in future -- current directions are getting heavily worked out and it's important to be aware of what might have been missed by the mainstream. Also, a popular science book can be read much more quickly than a serious textbook, so a one-to-one comparison is inappropriate -- read popular stuff for casual-but-enlightening bedtime reading and the more serious textbooks when you're at your best.
It's just like democracy -- you get to choose your own slave master from a choice of professional politicians. Here you have to choose between one big business or another -- and if all big businesses pander to the RIAA, you're stuffed. You don't really have that much choice.
They are saying: 'out rights are of the utmost importance and nobody else should have any.'
It's a greedy, selfish attitude that should never be encouraged or rewarded.
If the MPAA and RIAA want to act like spoilt children, they should be treated as such.
There are a great many 'science believers' that lack proper understanding, overapply logic without understanding its limitations, do likewise with statistics and a great many other fallacies, and such people may be looked at (and desire to be looked at) as serious scientists. Such people are a far greater problem, as is the irrational belief that modern science is the one true way of thinking (I'd advocate it myself as a good way of thinking, but would stop short of calling it the only way to the truth: that's religious dogmatism in disguise.)
In any case, physicists still can't get all their laws to work together properly and mathematicians know that they can't have consistent and complete foundations to their discipline, and there are a great many examples of deep and insightful though in other areas of human endeavour that science has yet to delve into, yet comprehend, so again it is too soon to call any other kind of though unreasonable.
That said, I myself believe that astrology should be taken with a rather large truckload of salt... I mean, the idea that one 12th of the population of the earth, half a billion people, have the same future prospects is nonsense (so out go the star-sign based methods.) The idea that one 365th of the population has the same future is again nonsense (so out goes the date of birth approach.)
Essentially, the mind exerts an influence on the world around us, and we intuitively consider our 'extended body' to be those things over which we feel we have a direct influence. In this sense, the notion of a distinction between body and tool disappears: merely there is a distinction between what the mind has direct influence over and what it does not.
(Just my rather abstract view... I often like to question basic assumptions that we naturally make, like the identification between self and body.)
Caveat: I'm not an AI researcher either, and what I do know of AI is enough to convince me never to go into the area in any serious way.
The idea is that the probability thing _is_ the reason why it works: intelligence goes way beyond the abilities of reductive reasoning to figure it out (for combinatorial reasons if nothing else.) i agree here - the discrete basis for a neural network will limit its ultimate abilities to something well short of human intelligence. But you can't reprogram a hamster! I'd suggest that they both have essentially zero chance of success given current methods. Thus the notion of better has problems. But without the ability to actually observe intelligence/consciousness, rather than just its gross macroscopic real-world effects, there will be no science to have a leap in. Only mystical traditions have approached the notion of such observation and nobody has looked too far at a fusion of the western science and eastern mystic traditions, something that would be beyond wierdness if anybody ever did. A human brain loaded up with mathematics, logic, physics and philosophy is by far the best device I've come across for doing this, and nothing else really comes close. Patterns are fundamental, and thus so is the need to recognise them. It is far more than just a way for the Modeller to create a better model of the observed world, though that is one powerful application. Feedback is another fundamental notion, as is the harnessing of complexity and, potentially, chaos. You've got me there: I just use my brain for that sort of thingCaveat: what I'm trying to put across is very hard to put into writing. Apologies for the inherent inaccuracies in what follows.
The main problem of creationism is, of course, definition 2 that you cite: the literal interpretation of the story of creation in Genesis. Personally I don't believe that this was ever the intention of those who wrote it. A lesser problem is the rejection of evolution since things can be observed to evolve in nature as they exist today. What is less of a problem is the rejection of what I'd call 'total evolution', the notion that gradual evolution and nothing else is how the world has come to the state in which we find it. One finds all sorts of philosophical problems if one goes in that direction.
If one truly understands that story, truly understands evolution and the nature of intelligence, I believe that they will come to the paradoxical conclusion that creation, intelligent design and evolution are in fact the same thing, just viewed differently. (For example, evolution, once you look beyond the basics, has in inherent intelligence to how it progresses - the combinatorial possibilities of blind selection together with feedback on the scale of the earth go well beyond those of the human brain for example. Taken to the extreme, one would posit an ultimate intelligence, which in a sense the eastern religions do, with the concepts of the Tao, and suchlike... though the thinking behind what I'm saying is rather hard to put into writing, so what I've written here is inherently inaccurate.)
It's desperation for success. This drives people to want that extra 10% out of themselves and they'll do anything to get it rather than learning to be content with who they are. Using 'mind-enhancing' drugs may bring brief success, but dependence follows and ultimately the person loses themselves.
I'd agree that a bit in moderation is ok, and perhaps quite good (I'm thinking of coffee and tea here).
When they make money, they credit their artists and claim that piracy is stopping them making more money. When they don't make money, they blame piracy. In both cases, they argue for stronger controls regardless of the reailty.
Personally, I buy CDs precisely because it's easy to rip them to my mac and ipod -- I rarely listen to the original CD, but I always purchase music I listen to (except for _legal_ downloads like e.g. RFUGrey002.) If a ban on ripping CDs was stringently enforced, I for one would purchase far fewer CDs.
Except for the analogue to digital conversion and analogue signal pathway which differs from CD player to CD player.
Whilst that is true, the problem is that a typical CD recording available today will be overcompressed whereas a typical vinyl recording won't be. Thus if I want to buy a decent recording, it may well be that the vinyl version is better than the CD version despite what the technical capabilities of the two media may be. That said, if vinyl sales rocket and CD sales plummet, we will most likely see a change in how CDs are mastered -- I expect both media to be around for a long time yet.
Given how the RAM fits into the mac mini, I can see why it's not panel accessible -- you'd have to take the entire side of the mini off! That said, why they don't use good old fashioned screws on the bottom I don't know.
Yeah - 256Mb is too little for Tiger. But after upgrading to 1GB (the max possible in a mini G4) Tiger runs fine for most things. I'm still wondering about Leopard -- I want the new features, but the 'if it ain't broke' mentality seems to be taking priority here.
Alternatively, Apple may choose to use a small HFS+ boot partition to get the system into a state where it can finish booting from ZFS.
I fully agree with network sharing support. Also, interoperability across the network with Linux boxes is a disaster so far as I'm concerned. (I tried it but found it to be a hit and miss affair as to whether NFS or SMB connections worked properly. Back in 10.3, accessing a SAMBA share would crash the finder some of the time!)
.DS_Store problem seems to be well known, but since it is not a problem with mac only networks, I imagine that Apple couldn't care less.
/Library or the user's ~/Library is at fault here, as is the apparently user-friendly idea of having self contained apps in the /Applications folder. Having more domains (or whatever you want to call them) so that, e.g. Audio apps could go in one domain (Library+Applications folder) and Office apps in another, possibly with things like Adobe's CS suite in its own private application group would make things easier, but I don't know what the best solution to program organisation is, and I'm sure that neither MacOSX nor Windows have got it right so far.
The
I've yet to try the mac mini on an apple only network, but interoperability with other machines such as my linux box is something I've given up on. It's quicker to send files with a USB key and all else I just work around.
I'd like an 'open command line prompt here' as well, and I dislike the inability to add things to the right-click menus.
The lack of Alt-F etc. shortcuts for accessing menus is my major gripe compared to Windows -- this is one thing I do miss.
Finally, the inability to properly uninstall applications seems to me to be a major oversight on the part of Apple. Sticking everything in
As a Mac Mini user: 1GB and an external FireWire hard drive make a great difference. Going from 256MB to 1GB shows you where (and where not) the lack of memory slows things down, and upgrading the hard drive shows you what's disk bound (various applications now start quicker.) Basically, a typical OSX setup needs lots of RAM. (IIRC, there are many speed/space tradeoffs that can be made in OS design, and most of these are done in favour of speed at the expense of space requirements in the case of OSX.) At least with the newer mac minis the minimum RAM is 512MB and, compared to 256MB, this alone makes a difference (I've used mac minis with 256MB, 512MB and 1GB of RAM).
IIRC XCode, in its previous guise as Project Center and Interface Builder has had this since before Apple even got hold of Next. Though I may be wrong.
.nib file and what happens as it is loaded), and XCode tends to hide this. And there's still much that Xcode can learn event from (dare I say it) M$VC.Net.
Having used XCode I must say that its a very good way of doing things, though once in a while I'd like to know what's actually going on (i.e. what's in a
Anyway, it's a little sad that Objective C is routinely getting dropped from modern distros (e.g. the OpenSuse DVD doesn't even have it as an installable option) and this makes GNUstep (especially GNUstep base IMO) less accessable than it should be. Given the size of GNUstep it should really appear as an optional developer package on most distros.
What you'd need to do is to reimplement GTK and Wine's underlying drawing architectures to use something common. Modifying Win32 to use GTK widgets is rather nontrivial unless I'm very much mistaken. Right now the common denominator is X, and theming and policy isn't implemented at that level.
Nobody creates ANYTHING in isolation. Any non-creative thought in anybody's head is 100% plagiarised from the rest of nature. Any creative thought is merely 99.9999% plagiarised. Just about everything anybody does is learned by copying something or somebody else. That is just the way nature and humanity work.
The language used to write a book is copied from the society that the book is sold to. The settings, themes and ideas of a story are always close to being unoriginal. Anything less and such a story would be too hard to read.
The perception that the author of a work or creation did most of the work in bringing it about is at fault. And basically the current system is a lottery of who gets credited for a given piece of work.
I'll stop ranting now.
There are many good things worth keeping in GNOME, and many worth changing. Some are foundational issues, and the best way to handle those foundational issues (such as getting Storage implemented and suchlike) is within a fork. I love GNOME (and use KDE under GNOME, rather than the other way around) and wouldn't like to see the GNOME 2 line disturbed too much in the name of progress, yet I wish to see that progress happen.
On a related topic, I'm not up to speed with the details of programming GNOME: in which order should I learn my way round the libraries?