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Alan Cox: The Battle for the Desktop 271

Posted by michael from the bunker-busters-needed dept.
richjones writes: "There's a new interview with Alan Cox up. I think he's right on the money with how Linux is going to spread into businesses, but he seems to think Internet applications are going to be big with consumers... I can't really see it... but he's Alan Cox, so he must know :)"
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Alan Cox: The Battle for the Desktop More

Alan Cox: The Battle for the Desktop

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  • Bah.... (Score:2, Funny)

    by JoeLinux ( 20366 )
    I'll bet he had his glasses on while interviewing. If he didn't, his responses probably would have been "GAH!!" "OH DEAR LORD SHUT OFF THE LIGHT!" "TOO BRIGHT! CAN'T CODE!"

    Much apologies to Userfriendly.

    JoeLinux

    • Re:Bah.... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Osty ( 16825 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @08:50PM (#3128258)

      Much apologies to Userfriendly.

      Shouldn't User Friendly be apologizing to you for subjecting you to bad art and no humor? The Penny Arcade [penny-arcade.com] guys were right [penny-arcade.com]. "People will pass up steak once a week for crap every day."

  • "Thousands of developers all over the world, from hobbyists to IBM engineers, are constantly contributing to open source software, so Cox's role of organising and applying improvements is vital."

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Marcelo Tosati [marcelothe...enguin.com] the new kernel maintainer now ?

    • Re:Hmm, is this right ? (Score:2, Informative)

      by Faldgan ( 13738 )
      Yes, Marcelo is the maintainer of the V2.4.X kernel series, but the Linux kernel is only a part of the software out there. open source software includes things like apache, and samba, and BSD, and mozilla, all sorts of totally cool things. Although I am a fan of Linux, even I must admit that it's not everything.

  • ok (Score:1, Insightful)

    by nomadic ( 141991 )
    but he's Alan Cox, so he must know :)"

    ...and there, ladies and gentleman, is one of the main problems with the open source movement, the computer industry, and society in general

    • Re:ok (Score:3, Insightful)

      by madprof ( 4723 )
      That one man's views are given too much credit and immense powers of knowledge and foresight attributed to him automatically?
      Yeah, I respect Alan and I'd say that was the case here.
      Terrific bloke, but we're all human.

    • Re:ok (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Jeremi ( 14640 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @10:08PM (#3128439) Homepage
      ...and there, ladies and gentleman, is one of the main problems with the open source movement, the computer industry, and society in general


      What, the inability to recognize humorous intent, even when the poster beats you about the face and neck with a smiley?

  • Alan Cox Interviews (Score:3, Informative)

    by BrianGa ( 536442 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @08:46PM (#3128237)
    See other Alan Cox interviews here [slashdot.org] and here [slashdot.org].

  • Besides being a kernel hacker, you're a bit of a cult figure or role model among open-source developers. Are you aware of that, does it affect you at all?

    Not particularly. I try and avoid those situations. I don't tend to lurk where people can find me.

    What?!? Does this mean he doesn't vote in /. polls?

  • Of course Internet Applications are going to be big with consumers. I don't see why they wouldn't. They don't require installation, they don't crash, they don't take space on the harddrive and they're easier to use. This can be good to Linux. The more PHP or Zope apps we create, the better.

    • Re:Of course (Score:1, Insightful)

      by _Knots ( 165356 )
      Internet applications bug me.

      Yes, the code may be running on my machine, but given that I'm *required* to have a net connection the entire time, it seems a little too risky - how do I know that the only thing going across the wire is the app? How do I know that my data isn't being sent back? And most importantly - can I save to my local system and not some ASP's computers. The ASPs may say that it allieviates the need for backups, but all it really does is take total control of your data from your hands and places it in somebody else's.

      _knots

    • They already are (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Of course Internet Applications are going to be big with consumers.

      Hotmail
      eBay
      Amazon
      IMDB
      ...
    • What internet are you using? How many times do you click on the [Checkout] button and the damn thing never responds? Then you're stuck with: "Gee do I click on it again and hope I don't get billed twice, or not click again and never see the product".

    • Re:Of course (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tb3 ( 313150 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @09:30PM (#3128369) Homepage
      Of course Internet Applications are going to be big with consumers.

      Well, that's one point of view; the Allan Cox and, dare I say it, Microsoft point of view. At the other end of the spectrum is the Apple 'digital hub' point of view, with iMovie, iDVD, iTunes, iPhoto, iToilet, iEtc. That kind of intense processing can't be done by a web app.

      Personally, I'm more inclined to the digital hub theory, because if all consumers wanted was web and email, WebTV would be a big hit by now. I guess time will tell.

      • No..actually..it's the SUN point of view. (Score:5, Informative)

        by SuperBug ( 200913 ) on Friday March 08, 2002 @12:16AM (#3128838) Homepage Journal
        Sun tried to do all this type of stuff with thin clients about 8 years ago. The idea was, and still is, though SUN doesn't understand why they failed so long ago, that the internet will eventually be "My Network". So, Sun made this logo "The network is the computer."
        Now that so many people are into "Grid computing" and the like, web-services are just the beginning. Sun had the right idea with their java stations so long ago, but they were trying to force the change, and be the ones to make the money, rather than just let it happen natrually, and be more of a benefactor/enabler.
        You can say It's the MS way of thinking..but it's not..MS is just "embracing/extending" a way of thinking, probably so they can say they invented it too.
        Before sun thought of it though..Larry Ellison, from Oracle corp was actually saying it first. SO it's really the Oracle way of thinking if you want to say who's thinking it is!

        • Before sun thought of it though..Larry Ellison, from Oracle corp was actually saying it first. SO it's really the Oracle way of thinking if you want to say who's thinking it is!


          No, it's not the Larry Ellison way of thinking. It's the 1960's, mainframe terminals, IT pinhead way of thinking. Application servers are just a warmed over version of dumb terminals.

          Bleh.
      • One does not go against the other - most likely your "email/internet machine" and your "digital hub" will be in different rooms, the latter connected to your "entertainment center" (wait, I think that doesn't need quotes). They'll probably be able to talk to each other and will share the same internet connection (if by that time there aren't cat5 - 6, , 17 whatever! - drops to every room from the broadband router in most homes, I'll be pissed) Oh well, desktop "average user" debates are all nice and dandy, but the important part is that I just installed the Mosfet liquid theme on KDE 2.2.2 and now my Penguin box is far prettier than any XP one I've ever seen (faster too, despite what most people seem to think - go figure)! :)

    • Re:Of course (Score:2, Insightful)

      by puck01 ( 207782 )
      Of course Internet Applications are going to be big with consumers. I don't see why they wouldn't. They don't require installation, they don't crash, they don't take space on the harddrive and they're easier to use. This can be good to Linux. The more PHP or Zope apps we create, the better.


      Let's suppose you are right, they don't/won't crash (I don't think that is true, but for the sake of arguement). Ok, great. It doesn't crash. What about when the network goes down at work or you temporarily lose your service with your ISP at home. Internet applications won't be doing much in that case. I'm not sure trading one for the other would even be worth it. At least with a crash you can get the program up and running, usually, in a small amount of time. Who knows how long the network will be down.

      puck

    • Disadvantages of internet applications (Score:4, Insightful)

      by hcdejong ( 561314 ) <.hobbes. .at. .xmsnet.nl.> on Friday March 08, 2002 @04:35AM (#3129295)

      Of course Internet Applications are going to be big with consumers. I don't see why they wouldn't. They don't require installation, they don't crash, they don't take space on the harddrive and they're easier to use.

      Let's see:

      • They require an internet connection. Given the number of times I can't log on to my ISP, I don't want to be reliant on that.
      • They reduce the number of applications available. How many tools do you use now that were developed as shareware by a single person, who has no hope in hell of being able to provide this tool as an Internet application?
      • Where does this leave my data? Sensitive or not, I want complete control over whatever data I create, not find everything deleted because I didn't access my account in three months.
      • They reduce user choice. "This application is written in ActiveX and runs only on Windows with IE".
      • Many internet apps run inside a browser. For nontrivial apps, this means the UI sucks: no menu bar, for one. No windows. No palettes.
      • The UI also sucks because there'll be no Human Interface Guidelines to follow. Everyone will try and invent the wheel again. Welcome to the bad old days of MS-DOS!
      • That internet connection is SLOW. When I create a new document in a local application, it's there in the blink of an eye. With an internet app, go wait for the page to load. The entire UI gets squeezed down that narrow pipe every time you do something.
      • Integration between apps sucks. Here I am, writing a /. comment. I'm handcoding HTML, for goodness' sake!

      IOW, Internet applications may become big, but I fear demand is more driven by IT departments (who but into the "no installation hassle" advantage) than by consumers.

      I've been working for a company that created a complex application for storage and manipulation of images. They had a Windows version and a Web-based version. The Web-based version was less functional, looked like shit and was bloody annoying because of the download times.

      • You have a couple of really good points.

        Lately I've bemoaned the limitations on the user interface that "universal" Web apps impose. If you compromise a little on the universal part, you can have people use ActiveX, Java.

        It's really too bad that W3C standards have not been designed and deployed sooner for, say, XML descriptions of widget behavior. Just little things that make GUI's a little more pleasant, but without the overboard approach of either Java or ActiveX of doing lots of other things, too.

        I've been pretty impressed with some of the PHP server applications like sourceforge and IMP and Horde, but have to wonder how much further we'd be if browsers supported just a little bit better GUI functionality.

        Of course, now that the browser wars are all but over, nobody will see fit to upgrade to Netscape 7 or IE 7 with the kinds of extensions I'm talking about. Instead, they'll probably either upgrade to AOL 9 with a proprietary set of extensions to HTML or to IE 7, with .NET to lock them into MS view of How to do things on the internet.

  • bad editing of interview? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Graspee_Leemoor ( 302316 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @08:48PM (#3128248) Homepage Journal
    Check out this weirdness in the interview:

    "How militant are you about which licences people use for their software, and how they use them?
    People who are not following the (free software) licence are pirates, it's as simple as that. It's no different if you take GPL (GNU Public Licence) code and don't give people the source code, or if you make copies of movies and sell them to people, it's the same thing. In terms of other software, it really depends on the people who write it. I don't think you have a right to dictate how somebody controls their own work, apart from the very, very basic standard you'd expect."

    Was this a bad cut and paste job or other bad editing or what?

    For the first part of the question it's almost like they asked him about that recent askslashdot
    where the guy was asking about his company's dodgy "interpretation" of the gpl, abusing it
    for pleasure and profit.

    In the last half of his answer, he appears to be on topic, but just take the question and the first
    sentence of the reply and it makes Alan Cox look like some kind of idiot...

    graspee

    • OK, I did preview my post, but I now sheepishly realize that AC was responding to the 2nd part of the question first, and the first part second.

      Still, it seemed confusing when I first read it and I still suspect bad editing.

      graspee

    • Re:bad editing of interview? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by grepMeister ( 37303 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @10:11PM (#3128448) Homepage
      I picked up on weirdness there too, but it was mostly the part where the edited final text of the interview says

      How militant are you about which licences people use for their software, and how they use them?
      People who are not following the (free software) licence are pirates, it's as simple as that.
      Sounds like a silly thing for ac to say, right? Well, this implies that the original, unedited response (to whatever question was _really_ asked) was

      People who are not following the licence are pirates, it's as simple as that.
      Which makes perfect sense, as he goes on to say

      It's no different if you take GPL code and don't give people the source code, or if you make copies of movies and sell them to people, it's the same thing. In terms of other software, it really depends on the people who write it. I don't think you have a right to dictate how somebody controls their own work, apart from the very, very basic standard you'd expect.
      Read: follow the bloody licence or yer a pirate. I mean, it's pretty clear what he's saying. I'd like to say that Hanlon's Razor ("Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity") applies here; this is rather difficult, because if it's stupidity, what about the relative cluefulness of the interviewer in the rest of the interview? If it's malice, why stop there? Why bother?

      I can think of some answers for a few of these questions, I suppose, but none make it too much clearer.
    • I was confused by that too.

      I figured that the article should have said: "People who are not following the [free software] licence are pirates, it's as simple as that."

      From looking at the rest of the article it seems as if they use parens instead of square brackets repeatedly. For example, take this statement: "We specifically allow people to use all the system call entry points for Linux for driver software, and the main libraries you need to build applications are under (a different) licence."

      Why are there parens around "a different?" The sentence makes much better sense without the parens. It looks to me like the "a different" was used to replace LGPL.

      Alan Cox seems to be saying that he thinks people should abide by the license regardless whether its Microsoft software or GNU software. The "(free software)" was probably added in by an editor.

    • So, since beethoven is dead, and we don't want to
      'control' his work, we can't reproduce it anymore
      since he has no say in it?

      What a wonderful world we live in!

  • Linux *is* in the home...in stealth mode (Score:5, Insightful)

    by K8Fan ( 37875 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @08:49PM (#3128255) Journal

    It's sneaking in via devices like the Tivo. Here's a solid, reliable utterly useful device with a great interface. Think of it as proof of concept that Linux can be used to make a computer for your Mom.

    • "Sneaking", exactly. Which is what condemns it to remain an anonymous OS for embedded devices. It will never replace Windows on the desktop with that approach.

  • What Linux needs to win on the consumer desktop? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 07, 2002 @08:49PM (#3128256)

    Like many geeks ... er programmers without any notion of business, Mr. Cox misses the ball on the proliferation of Linux into the consumer market. Linux will continue to be a niche product on the desktop until the day that AOL and the other major Internet-service providers (ISPs) provide an Internet client that runs on Linux. Why? The #1 consumer application -- the killer application, if you will -- is Internet connectivity.

    When will AOL provide an Internet client that allows me to dial into AOL?

    • isn't there people reverse engineering the AOL protocol to do exactly that?

    • Re:What Linux needs to win on the consumer desktop (Score:5, Informative)

      by CtrlPhreak ( 226872 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @10:02PM (#3128430) Homepage
      There is the PengAol [pengaol.org] project where they have created a *working* client to access aol. the downside is that it's all in french and appears to only work in france (I've never gotten it to work). Maybe you can try your luck and/or donate some code to the project.
    • What I don't understand is why AOL created their own (proprietary I might add) protocol for their network (or at least why they continue to use one...). TCP/IP can easily do everything their network does, coupled with a decent web browser and a search domain, typing the "keyword" into your AOL program (standard web browser) will bring up pornfreaks.keywords.aol.com or something that could point to a well coded DHTML or Flash or whatever site. Why do all these people that create proprietary stuff when there are open standards that do the same thing make money? Utilize existing technology to do something new, I'm sure they could make alot more money that way anyways, more userbase is good isn't it. Totally away from the point of this post, but isn't the consumer market migrating away from services like AOL anyhow, everything is availiable on the general internet now, and with broadband becoming the norm, why bother with badly coded software? I work at a (normal) ISP, and whenever someone installs the AOL sofware, it fubars the Windows TCP/IP stack. And if my guess is correct, AOL doesn't have a huge market share, though they have by far the biggest market share. In other words, maybe 10% of Internet users use AOL, the other 90% are spread across local ISP and such (these numbers are arbitrary). When will these monopolistic companies get the picture that people don't like being pushed around (at least people who know anything...)

  • Internet Applications (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Wells2k ( 107114 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @08:55PM (#3128269)
    ...he seems to think Internet applications are going to be big with consumers... I can't really see it...

    I can see it, and here is why: As technology spreads throughout the world, the devices are going to become easier and easier to come by. Soon they will just be a part of life for everyone. Look at how televisions are in every household now, and a radio in every car. This is just standard progress, and the devices that are based on the technology will just get simpler and simpler to use.

    I was particularly enamoured by Alan's example of the Black and Decker equipment, "So I could see in a few years' time owning a home PC becomes kind of like the Black & Decker DIY kit -- it's something people have because they enjoy that kind of thing, not something people have because they want to get on with certain specific tasks."

    • Re:Internet Applications (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mpe ( 36238 ) on Friday March 08, 2002 @06:37AM (#3129486)
      I can see it, and here is why: As technology spreads throughout the world, the devices are going to become easier and easier to come by. Soon they will just be a part of life for everyone. Look at how televisions are in every household now, and a radio in every car.

      People are generally not expected to maintain their own television sets, radios, washing machines, cars, etc.
      But oddly people don't make a big fuss about Windows expecting end users to carry out maintance tasks. Whilst they do about unix type systems having separation between these two. Even though it's Windows, rather than unix, which is at odds with just about every other piece of technology...

  • Favourite Quote (Score:4, Funny)

    by SkulkCU ( 137480 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @09:06PM (#3128295) Homepage Journal

    (regarding the first Linux Summit)
    The official part of it was actually very non-productive. The amount of work that got done over beer and at three in the morning cannot possibly be underestimated.
    • What he seems to be saying is that no matter how little work you might *think* got done over beer and at 3 in the morning, *even less* was actually done.

      Let's hope Alan's not involved any serious activity that requires understanding the difference between "underestimating" and "overestimating."

      Cheers
      -b
  • Because clearly an operating system can only be monopolising if it looks like fisher price, and every feature almost-works, before changing all your settings sporadically. Pick up some microsoft tact, install linux once, no better.. have a linux cd near your computer, and nothing else will run on it, ever!

  • It's still about the apps... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MissMyNewton ( 521420 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @09:23PM (#3128344)
    Here's two: Office and the Bloomberg service...

    Just a couple of the critical apps we need. If I can't even coax an OS X version of Bloomberg out of them, how can I persuade them to do a Linux port (even though it'd be easy, since they do/did a Solaris version).

    And we still *need* Office. OpenOffice (which I burn CDs of for employees' home use, after they get sticker shock at the cost of Office) isn't a sufficient replacement. (hopefully this is just a -yet-)

    We need apps. Big ones. How do we get there?

    • I haven't got a clue what "the Bloomberg service" is, so that cannot be too "critical".

      As for an Office, I am in one, and it has a Linux desktop in it...

      As for users needing MS Office ... well I know one user who thinks the only way to download pictures from a digital camera is to paste the photo into an empty Word document and save it. Of course, it plays havoc with his firm's web-based database system when he tries to upload the .DOC file as a picture....

      Moral: Many users need Office, because they haven't a clue what they need.

    • MS Office would be good marketing...But bad as it would give macro viruses a route into a Linux users doc's etc.

      Hopefully with a miracle MSFT will be forced to open the specs to these file formats perhaps.

      Matt
      • The spec is called OLE Compound Documents, and an open source import/export library [apache.org] was recently added to the Apache Jakarta [apache.org] stable of projects.
        • The spec is reverse engineered and not only quite incorrect in places, it's also utterly contradictory - different versions of MS Office programs cannot read files saved by other versions. In some cases there are off by one errors, and the bug eats away at buffered space - when the buffered space is gone, the file will crash the app, or, post bugfix, gets rewritten (fastsave gets disabled). Amazing, contradictory stuff. Try using MS Office for the Mac, which has serious problems - and they had the WinOffice team to ask questions directly.

          --
          Evan

    • Re:It's still about the apps... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Jeffrey Baker ( 6191 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @11:51PM (#3128728)
      Bloomberg exists for Solaris, and it doesn't use most Microsoft interfaces. The user interface for Bloomberg is a weird text and graphics terminal that reminds one of a 1980s Textronics terminal. Free software cannot be foreign to Bloomberg, as the Bloomberg application embeds Gecko from the Mozilla project. Little effort would be needed to run Bloomberg on a Linux machines, and because Bloomberg distributes controlled hardware to some customers, they have a good channel to slip in Linux without anyone taking notice.

      I observe growing Linux use in finance. My firm uses Linux for everything but accounting and desktops, and many large firms use Linux in their servers. A Bloomberg terminal running Linux should be well accepted.

    • Have you tried Wine in the last two weeks? They've made huge changes, so Bloomberg might work. As for MS Office, the main gotcha is getting it to install under Windows then moving it over to a partition that an OS (Linux or other) can read.

      Details on what to do for specific MS Office versions are at appdb.codeweavers.com.

    • This is one consultants and CTOs worldwide should be watching;

      GNU Enteprise [gnuenterprise.org]

      Here's an overview; "GNU Enterprise (GNUe) is a suite of tools and applications for solving the needs of the enterprise. From human resources, accounting, customer relationship management and project management to supply chain or e-commerce, GNUe can handle the needs of any business, large or small. If you are looking for a full-function ERP, GNUe is the package for you. [gnuenterprise.org]

      Details: Written in Python (for easy application creation) and C (for speed), GNUe is under constant and heavy development. If you want to write custom applications for it, it's ready. Pre-packaged applications are on the back burner as the development team works on making the core modules more complete and compliant with varying standards. My personal estimate from following the project is that the first complete applications will show up in about 6 months, and then rapidly accelerate as more app developers learn about GNUe and get interested.

    • I work for Bloomberg, on the client software.

      Here's two: Office and the Bloomberg service...

      *Blush*

      Just a couple of the critical apps we need. If I can't even coax an OS X version of Bloomberg out of them, how can I persuade them to do a Linux port (even though it'd be easy, since they do/did a Solaris version).

      We definitely still support Solaris (see this [bloomberg.com]). Linux support is technically feasible. There are many other issues involved, however.

      [SNIP]

      We need apps. Big ones. How do we get there?

      In the case of Bloomberg, I would advise asking your sales rep for support for your platform of choice. Seriously.

      Chris

  • If you, like me, are on dial-up and would rather be linked to the entire article on one page, click here [zdnet.co.uk] .

  • his thoughts on disclosure (Score:3, Insightful)

    by legLess ( 127550 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @09:25PM (#3128356) Journal
    If the vendor hasn't fixed the bug in 28 days, then tough -- after that you're not reporting bugs, you're covering up for a company's incompetence, and there's a very big difference.
    Amen, brother Alan.

  • all this fuss (Score:4, Funny)

    by discogravy ( 455376 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @09:26PM (#3128358) Homepage
    all this fuss about whether linux is ready for the desktop or not and it turns out it's Alan viewpoint that's not ready for the desktop.

  • Interesting (Score:2, Interesting)

    by SuperCal ( 549671 )
    I found it interesting that he would prefer not to visit the US because of current copyright issues. I wonder what people in other countries think of our copyright schemes, I know each country has its own intellectuall property protection problems, but our (US) system seems generally more basterdized then most.

  • Linux Infiltration (Score:5, Interesting)

    by D.A. Zollinger ( 549301 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @09:40PM (#3128388) Homepage Journal

    I think we are going to see a shift in thought about what computers are, and what they can do for us. As Alan stated, users want services, if their computer messes up, they want to hit the power button, and have it all come back like it was. Users don't want to have to deal with hardware issues, they want their computer to work like their phone. Plug it in, and it works - it just works.

    Perhaps what Alan was unconsciously advocating was the promotion of terminal services like those being developed by LTSP [ltsp.org] and perhaps companies offering terminal/computer services to employees, and perhaps in a broader sense, 'computer utilities' who would offer computer service to residential and small business customers.

    Compared to Microsoft, which requires 3 (count them, 3) licences for one user on one thin client to connect to one terminal server (one for the terminal server OS, one for the client OS, and one for the Client Access Licence), Linux can provide better functionality at a fraction of the cost. Linux opens this market, where Microsoft has sufficiently stifled its growth by making it more difficult than it should be to enter that market.

    • Users don't want to have to deal with hardware issues, they want their computer to work like their phone. Plug it in, and it works - it just works.

      Perhaps what Alan was unconsciously advocating was the promotion of terminal services like those being developed by LTSP [...]

      On the K12 Linux Terminal Server Project [k12ltsp.org] website, on the Terminal Hardware Information [k12ltsp.org] page, there's a quite funny movie (Real Video: streaming [k12ltsp.org]/direct link [k12ltsp.org], 5MB), showing how easy it is to build a terminal. "Before you get started watch one of our students show you how easy it is to build your own diskless workstation!"

      People are usually amazed when I show them this movie, especially when I say that, yes, you don't have to install any software, you just build it and plug it to the working network. People are used to situation where when you want to add 20 new computers to your office, it's a work for few days, not to mention licensing for the software plus the price of the hardware.

      I use this movie in my LTSP [ltsp.org] propaganda.

    • Perhaps what Alan was unconsciously advocating was the promotion of terminal services like those being developed by LTSP [ltsp.org] and perhaps companies offering terminal/computer services to employees,

      One major issue about a thin client setup is that it dosn't matter that much if the machine sat in front of the user fails, blows up, drinks too much coffee. Whereas with a Windows workstation they may lose all the work since the last time they logged in, all their emails, etc...

  • Internet apps are already massive (Score:4, Insightful)

    by samael ( 12612 ) <Andrew@Ducker.org.uk> on Thursday March 07, 2002 @09:40PM (#3128389) Homepage
    Most of the people I know who have personal email addresses - use hotmail. It's the worlds biggest internet app.

    I have used Yahoo Calendar as my organising tool before. It's another internet app.

    They're easy to use, simple to start, accessible from almost anywhere.

    They aren't the future, they're the present.
    • Something I'd like to see, and something that may actually be possible if broadband gets more mainstream, is to have these sorts of services running on your home computer. Just like what yahoo and msn do now, only w/o the ads. (I keep my schedule and to-do list in my space on the universities computers, and can get to it anywhere that has a telnet or ssh client, for example.)
  • Quote:

    The amount of work that got done over beer and at three in the morning cannot possibly be underestimated.

    Did he really mean to say this?

  • nope nope nope (Score:3, Insightful)

    by gelfling ( 6534 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @09:51PM (#3128413) Homepage Journal
    Home apps are:

    Internet connection
    Low end Ethernet NIC to broadband
    Wireless to broadband
    Low end office apps for personal/school
    Personal bookkeeping/money
    Geneology and similar specialized apps
    Multimedia
    CD operations including stripping and burning
    CD burning for data backup
    Games
    Internet games
    IM
    Color scanning
    Color printing
    Sharable file formats
    Trackball/optical mouse support
    Joystick game controller support
    Quick boot
    Resilient recovery from hard power off

  • Computer for you mom (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ricardo2c ( 561838 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @09:52PM (#3128416)
    I don't know about you guys, but I've seen users get completely lost when installing software, or looking for that .doc file he saved somewhere, or even trying to add a music to a winamp playlist.
    Well, I'm an experienced user and would say "you dumb***, drag that outta the floppy's window to the playlist and it's done" but hey... they have no clue about how the GUI works!
    Say what you want, but for users who only touch the comp. once a week or less, and can't even program that video they have for years already... ALL the options we have as OS (Yeah, I know MacOSX) suck. Bad.
    When are we doing to put a level of abstraction between that lousy filesystem design (in the user's point of view) so we can really add INFORMATION where we want? Can I add a note to my DivX;-) file? Nope. File design doesn't allow it. What if I wanted an email attached to an MP3? Nope. Can't.
    If we learned something with Apple's iTunes, iPhoto, iWhatever, we'd see they KEEP THE USER FAR AWAY FROM THE FS, while not completely locking the user away from it. Beautiful, huh? So why are we still insisting in making a WINDOWS CLONE out of our GUIs???
    I know this reply floats around a bunch of topics, but they all end up in the same question: DOES THE SOFTWARE SERVES US WELL, EASILY? CAN IT DO WHAT I WANT/NEED???
    "Hack that directory tree!!!"
    • what if I wanted an email attached to an MP3? Nope. Can't.

      Why the hell would someone want to attach an email to a MP3? Is there some magic transfer system that I don't know about? Most people would attach an MP3 to an email, but that must be too easy.

      Besides, there is already an area in the ID3v2 Tag that lets you write comments in. What the hell are you going to do with an email attached to a MP3, write home to tell mom about it?

    • I've thought about the filesystem, and it seems to me that it would be better to have a non-hierarchical filesystem. Applications would have their own files. For example, maybe you would click on a "files" button and see all files associated with that application, and they could be organized more than one way. If a file belonged to more than one app, it would be marked that way. You could have a tool that showed all shared files. It would still be a filesystem of sorts, but the computer would not be such a *slave* to it like our OSes are now. It would be more of a database. And your gui desktop would not live at a spot in the filesystem. Who can make sense of that? The desktop can be its own thing altogether, not a directory. Anyway, just some thoughts I've had. Feel free to poke holes in them, but don't be too harsh :).
    • Can I add a note to my DivX;-) file? Nope. File design doesn't allow it. What if I wanted an email attached to an MP3? Nope. Can't.

      Sure you can - just use the describe command. It winds up in that hidden DESCRIPT.ION file.

      Ah, the majesty of 4DOS.

      On a more serious note, many filesystems have supported this in various ways, both historically and currently. Macs have the resource fork, which can store things like icons (which is a very good example of a useful description). Most of the new Linux file systems have metadata channels of some sort (Ext3, Reiserfs, etc.). Even XP (and to a lesser extent 2k) has some sort of thing called "streams" that I know little about, but from what I heard of, sounds similar (I haven't used Windows in several years now). All are filesystem level, meaning they are part and parcel of the file, but seperate from the data.

      --
      Evan

  • Cox correct once != correct always.... (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Mark Andresen of Netscape fame.

    What has he done lately?

    Being right once doesn't mean you are right, or insightful, forever after.

  • Can Cox Solve the Great "Koan"? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stixnpics ( 563438 ) on Thursday March 07, 2002 @10:21PM (#3128476)
    M$ owns the desktop until there a robust
    Office clone... My perfect anti-trust settlement
    would force M$ and all other companies to
    use standardized file formats and submit their
    extensions to a standards body.

    With MS file formats can be imported but never exported. OpenOffice comes close with most file
    formats but there are still companies that would
    never leave MS office because the have locked
    themselves into Excel macros and actually want
    to send *.exe files in Outlook, etc.

    Until very large companies see he benefits and
    just say no to proprietary formats owning THEIR
    data ten M$ will continue to reate new formats
    for media, e-commerce, distributed computing...
    We the people should at least own the right to
    2 or more vendors for a given application type.
    That's the intent of anti-trust law... Competition
    actually works to increase innovation and lower costs.

    Of course, free software produces dramatic costs
    decreases but it does limit the exchange of value
    that creates a robust market. I see Eric Ramond's
    Bazaar as a swap meet type of model... Great for
    bargains that only the buyer truly values but most
    cannot or will ot speculate in... To risky.

    Of course, big projects that support consulting
    models show some promise to establish some kind of
    professional market but it wold ot be the technolog marketplace we have today... and it's hard to tell
    the impacts of these models on the economy in the large. As Mel Brook's loved to say as the world's oldest man... "It's a nice living."
    • Of course, free software produces dramatic costs decreases but it does limit the exchange of value that creates a robust market.

      Whilst this might be an issue to companies who sell software does it matter to the vastly greater number who simply use software. Whilst proprietary software and data formats may be useful to the likes of Microsoft they are at best an inconvenience to those buying their software.
  • Linux has already won all of my desktops. It has been ages since I booted The Evil OS for anything--even multimedia-related apps. In fact, I couldn't completely switch back to Windows even if I wanted to and was some kind of l33t warez d00d. I have become dependant on the greater flexibility afforded me by all the wonderful OSS out there. 'Critical mass' can't be far away now. My eye is on K and Open Office for bringing about the turning point for the non-tech population.
  • Does anybody have any pointers/info regarding the Microsoft library licensing forbidding open source as refered to in the following quote?


    It's actually ironic that, because Microsoft has started putting licences on Windows libraries now which basically forbid you from writing free or open source using their Windows libraries. They're specifically trying to shut out and control. They're monopolists.

    I can't imagine how someone can tell me I can't give something that I made away for free, but that I can sell it.
  • You don't see it? How can you not?

    I look at my laptop. Aside from programming I do with it (for my job).. what do I have running:

    Several instances of IE
    Trillian (irc/msn/icq/ym/aim)
    a stock ticker
    Email

    These are things I use the computer for probably 90% of the time. And all of them are basically online services.
    (It doesn't matter to me if they are run locally or not)

    Or to put it differently, they are of no use to me without the network.

  • he seems to think Internet applications are going to be big with consumers... I can't really see it

    Wow! You can't see it. Unfortunately I am not able to read the second part of the interview, but going by what is commented, here is my take.

    For the past several years, personal computer systems are reorganizing themselves around internet. Most of the people I know use their computers for internet applications only. Then why you can not see that internet applications are going to be big with customers?
  • like SAP, where believe it or not, 4GB of address space, 4GB of memory, is just not enough. The SAP people have to actually try and squash their code into it, the software is so powerful.


    haha. Yeah, 'powerful' is one word for it mate...

  • What is it about clever people and dumb clients? (Score:4, Informative)

    by streetlawyer ( 169828 ) on Friday March 08, 2002 @09:11AM (#3129899) Homepage
    If you ever meet a true genius, you will know him by this mark; he will have utterly stupid ideas about the future of "network computers". I don't know why this is true, but it is.

    You can try to tell a Larry Ellison or an Alan Cox that people don't *need* a car any more powerful than a Yugo, but they *want* an SUV. You can pointedly ask how someone's going to edit their digital photographs via "Java over the web". You can ask why they're so keen on analogies to the game console market (a notorious graveyard of ambitions). But nothing seems to work.

    I think it's called "intellectual arrogance".

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