Disqus - Latest Comments for stapostol

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

The Fiddler — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 06:21:01 -0000

Without a signature there's no way to verify this claim.

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

The Fiddler — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:05:20 -0000

Seems it worked.

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

The Fiddler — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 06:30:43 -0000

Yeah, yeah, the necessary offtopic interjection to explain the difference between GNU and Linux, the OS, the kernel, blah blah blah. Frankly, noone gives a damn.

Users like to call this OS "Linux" not "GNU slash Linux (tm)". Just like they prefer to say "Windows" rather than "Microsoft Windows Vista Enterprise Edition with Service Pack 3 (tm x 3)".

Besides, Linux is simply more catchy than GNU/Linux.

I can see how this can be annoying for those who work on GNU but the hard truth is that noone else cares. In other words, use GNU/Linux all you like in marketing material or technical discussions but the users have the final word on how they are going to call it. They do not mean this as some subtle attack against GNU - it's simply how things work.

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

The Fiddler — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:55:25 -0000

Mono and Moonlight are not Microsoft efforts.

I do not wish to derail this discussion any more, but you seem to be ignoring a simple fact: all three points you make affect closed source applications to a much larger extent than open source ones.

OpenOffice is not 100% compatible with OOXML. Guess what, MS Office is not 100% compatible either, but the difference is there's nothing you can do about it.

Skype does not do a "good job of supporting all major platforms". In fact, Skype/Linux is downright awful: it's still on version 2 when on windows it's on version 4; there's no amd64 support; fullscreen video behaves badly; it crashes a lot... The Skype protocol itself is completely closed, which means you cannot create a better client even if you wanted to.

You don't seem to have any problems with this, yet you are distrustful of Microsoft taking part in an open source effort.

Maybe it's just a different point of view, but I much prefer Microsoft becoming more open source friendly than staying on the other side of the fence forever. I distrust Skype much, *much* more, simply because they have shown no intention of ever playing well with others.

Re: CodePlex Foundation - Miguel de Icaza

The Fiddler — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 18:51:51 -0000

No positive effect != bad effect.

- More open source stuff may imply less closed source stuff, which *is* good. How many closed source projects, even big ones, die from lack of resources? What happens to its users then?

- Open source gives you the ability to port a project to Linux. Closed source? No chance.

- With open source, you can fix interoperability issues by implementing standard formats. With closed source you are left at the whims of the vendor. Think Skype.

Re: Popular Topics on ServerOverflow - Miguel de Icaza

The Fiddler — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:17:26 -0000

The font is 'Candara' rendered through FreeType with medium hinting.

It's a very sleek font that ships with Vista. For the full effect, you should see it with FreeType's light hinter, with subpixel antialiasing & the bytecode interpreter enabled.