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I prefer black on white, and I always have terminals beyond 80x25, but aside from colors and window sized, I think that the cli is _the_ UI for Linux, and it is better than any other *NIX out there in that department. Most other *NIX's have died out, but the cli for Solaris makes me type date and make sure that it really is 2008. I'm not knocking Solaris in terms of its kernel and Sun's hardware can be good (sometimes it sucks). But in 2008 if I do vi /var/adm/messages and it tells me that my window is too wide, I am forced to type the date command again.

A little more on topic, I think that it will really take a commercial company to make a GUI for any *NIX that is worthwhile. It just seems too big of a project for open source to come together and do. The best that we have to date are two windows ripoffs with the groovy option to have wiggly windows and stuff.

My rank orderings of GUIs are:

1) OS X
2) Windows
3) other

Hint. I don't use windows, and I don't see that happening for another 5-10 years. I'm a Linux/UNIX fan. I like what is under the hood, and to me it just "makes sense". For me, windows does not, under the hood nor the shiny exterior. Today, OS X is UNIX with a good GUI thrown on top. Sure, its not perfect, but I'm at home and looking at my nice OS X GUI after looking at my Gnome desktop all day at work makes my eyes feel better. I also find it ironic that of all the terminal apps I've used, OS X has the best Terminal app out there. Its also nice to have the hard stuff in Linux taken care of by the GUI in OS X.

Now the BIG difference here, is that I would not want to run OS X on all of the servers that I manage under Solaris and Linux. Why? Like Windows, the GUI is the OS.

This is really tough, but there needs to be a GUI that works with Linux that can help novices with the basics, but those GUIs can't break if a "power user" comes in and modifies the config file in a text editor and now the GUI is either broken or it screws up the config file. This is _NOT_ a trivial task to accomplish, and this is one of the reasons that a good GUI has not come to surface for Linux.

In fact, I think that the GUI experience was better like 10 years ago under Linux with things like AfterStep and WindowMaker, and Enlightenment. I even know some older *NIX folks that still use FVWM, and I liked that back in the day too. So, I dunno, maybe 2009 is the year of Linux on the desktop. However, unless an excellent GUI comes out for it, I don't think this will be the year.

 

bfwebster writes "Microsoft has lost its appeal to remove class-action status for the 'Vista Capable' lawsuit that has already resulted in some embarrassing internal e-mails being released publicly. As Computerworld reports, in its appeal to the US Ninth Circuit Court, Microsoft argued (among other things) that 'continuing the lawsuit might mean new disclosures of insider e-mails, which could "jeopardize Microsoft's goodwill" and "disrupt Microsoft's relationships with its business partners."' Given what's been released so far (158-page PDF), not to mention Microsoft's history of rather frank internal e-mails, that's probably putting it mildly. There could be some interesting reading ahead."

An anonymous reader writes "Lionheart was simply blogging about the state of affairs in the UK of radical Islam. Islamic extremists have created "no-go" areas across Britain where it is too dangerous for non-Muslims to enter.They're going to arrest Lionheart for writing about it? It's printed in the Telegraph for the world to see, yet they're going to arrest a blogger? Are you kidding me?"
http://dissfunktional.wordpress.com/2008/01/06/sos-blogger-in-trouble/

nunya_bizns writes "Fox News and the Republican Party of Iowa are trying to keep Dr Ron Paul out of IOWA's Decemter Debate — http://sianews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=3282

The debate will be limited to those candidates who have satisfied the following criteria:
1. Announced a formal campaign for President; and
2. Filed the necessary paperwork with the Federal Election Commission; and
3. Met all U.S. constitutional requirements; and
4. Garnered at least 5% of the national electorate as determined by an average of the most recent national telephone polls of registered voters conducted by non-partisan public opinion polling organizations leading up to the registration deadline as determined by Fox News Channel and the Republican Party of Iowa or garnered an average of at least 5% in the most recent polls of Iowa voters conducted by the American Research Group and the Des Moines Register.

Sign the Petition to rightfully have Ron Paul participate in the debate — http://www.petitiononline.com/r0npau1/petition.html"

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The battle over the "reliability" of the RIAA's expert witness, Dr. Doug Jacobson of Iowa State, continues, with the RIAA defending its expert by arguing that "everyone in his field proceeds the same way he did", to which the defendant responded by reminding the judges of the witness's own testimony that his "method" was invented by himself a year and a half ago, and has never been shared with, much less accepted by, anyone else in the "scientific community".... a prerequisite for admissibility of expert testimony in federal court under the Daubert case."

Raul654 writes "Philip de Vellis, the author of the Hilary Clinton viral video was outed today on the Huffington Post. The company he works for, Blue State Digital, has now fired him as a result. Said Vellis: "I made the 'Vote Different' ad because I wanted to express my feelings about the Democratic primary, and because I wanted to show that an individual citizen can affect the process.""

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "Judge Colleen McMahon in Elektra v. Santangelo, in White Plains, NY, federal court has rejected the RIAA's attempt to dismiss "without prejudice", ruling instead that she is "entitled to have her legal status resolved one way or the other." (pdf). The judge ordered the RIAA to dismiss with prejudice by April 1st, or be ready to go ahead with a plan for the trial on April 13th. The judge rejected the RIAA's claim that Ms. Santangelo had defrauded the court, ruling that "Nothing in any papers filed by plaintiffs suggests IN THE SLIGHTEST that Mrs. Santangelo has ever perpetrated any fraud on this court." (capitals in the original)."

The Czech President has put into words an idea that I have had for a long time. That is, the "Global Warming" lobby has become a pseudo-religion, replacing dead Communism, as the socio-economic ideology that will eventually threaten the freedom of democracies and their citizens.

It is certainly acting like a religion, complete with those, all too ready to yell, "heresy" and pull out their "scriptures" of speculative (theory shot) studies, pounding them out as "truth" from the pulpit.

It is a church where the moderate, environmentally concerned is lambasted as "sinner" and "outcast" for not drinking the Holy Communion of climate hysteria.

Penguinisto writes "A business has so far felt the very real pain of sotware patent enforcement — but this time, it is a large company who extinguished the little guy. Reyes Infografica had recently sent a Cease and Desist notice to a small Poser hobbyist programmer named Phil Cooke for his "Clothing Creator" program, claiming that it violates one of their patents (Phil's own site/support forum contains the copy of Reyes' C&D, Phil's announcement, and relevant discussions.) Clothing Creator has been out for a couple of years now. Basically, it builds quick custom clothing for humanoid 3d figures within the 3d compositing/rendering program called Poser. Recently, E-Frontier, the current owner of Poser, had partnered with Reyes to sell a competing product in E-Frontier's online store, called "Virtual Fashion". To E-Frontier's credit, they recently announced that they would stop selling the Reyes product until the dispute is settled, though at time of writing the product is still available for sale. So is this the "innovation" that software patents were supposed to foster?"

An anonymous reader writes "Law professors are up in arms over SwapNotes, a student run website that (gasp) let's students freely share notes(I, II, III, IV. Not exactly a new concept in the age of this thing we call the Internet. Some are defending it, others are going with the head in the sand mentality. To quote one student: "I suspect that one reason many professors get upset about this is that the outlines from previous years reveal how little work actually goes into the lectures on a yearly basis." C'mon! Let's be real guys — students can't share notes?! What's next, no buying review books?! What are the professors claiming? Copyright Infringement."