Quotes of the week [LWN.net]

I wonder what you are supposed to do with end-users who insist on mailing you personally, with blindingly obvious suggestions for improvement, and who when you politely point out that there is no shortage of good ideas only developer time (which they are wasting right now), and can they go to the discuss list, instead reply with yet another set of time wasting waffle; sigh.

-- Michael Meeks

Let's discuss a real world scenario. As you know we like to help The Department of Homeland Security impede the plans of American travelers. Just the other day, I saw a security guard discover day old sushimi in a tourist's pocket. He confiscated the tuna fish and ate it immediately. That's when I thought of using Go to screen travellers who had recently eaten sushi. This will help security guards fish out spoiled tuna to eat, which will surely lead to indigestion problems and subsequent longer processing times.

-- Charles Thompson

This is fascinating turn of events for C# developers as Nokia will make WP7 more relevant in the marketplace, making C# the lingua-franca of all major mobile operating systems. This astute chart explains why I am basking in joy.

-- Miguel de Icaza

Unequivocally, Qt is not dead. This morning we heard top Nokia executives like CTO Rich Green talk about Qt and the future. Qt will continue to live on through Symbian, MeeGo and the non-mobile Qt industries and platforms.

-- Aron Kozak

(Log in to post comments)

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 17, 2011 8:38 UTC (Thu) by branden (subscriber, #7029) [Link]

"I wonder what you are supposed to do with end-users who insist on mailing you personally, with blindingly obvious suggestions for improvement, and who when you politely point out that there is no shortage of good ideas only developer time (which they are wasting right now), and can they go to the discuss list, instead reply with yet another set of time wasting waffle; sigh."

When I first looked at this I misread "end-users" as "anti-users".

I cannot convince myself that I erred.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 17, 2011 14:00 UTC (Thu) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]

"This is fascinating turn of events for C# developers as Nokia will make WP7 more relevant in the marketplace, making C# the lingua-franca of all major mobile operating systems. This astute chart explains why I am basking in joy"

By my reading, it appears that this statement was made without irony and is intended to be taken literally. Any other viewpoints?

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 17, 2011 15:00 UTC (Thu) by DOT (subscriber, #58786) [Link]

This fascinating turn of events did nothing to increase the availability of C# interpreters. Yes, C# runs on WP7. But it also runs on MeeGo and Symbian. So no change there. Icaza is simply glad that Microsoft has a chance of taking over the mobile market. Because then C# becomes the only option. Wonderful opportunities, indeed...

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 18, 2011 6:04 UTC (Fri) by jamesh (guest, #1159) [Link]

Well, while C#/.Net is an option on many platforms, it seems to be a requirement for WP7. So if your aim is to see more wide spread use of the technology rather than just making it available on more platforms it probably is a plus.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 18, 2011 13:28 UTC (Fri) by jospoortvliet (subscriber, #33164) [Link]

No, he is serious. He probably doesn't realize that the company contributing about 3% of the kernel code (well over the 0.7 of Google and 0.01 of MS) will stop doing that. And that company also happens to pay for a lot of the work on Gstreamer, Telepathy and countless other core FOSS/Linux (and GNOME, something he might still care about) components.

So yes, it strengthens the C# ecosystem (marginally). Which helps mono a weeny bit. It hurts everyone else in the Free Software ecosystem so I couldn't care less about Miguels happiness in this regard.

Quotes of the week

Posted Feb 18, 2011 21:35 UTC (Fri) by oak (guest, #2786) [Link]

> And that company also happens to pay for a lot of the work on Gstreamer, Telepathy and countless other core FOSS/Linux (and GNOME, something he might still care about) components.

Qt, Xorg and D-BUS on which Nokia also contributes, either directly or through sub-contractors, are also pretty central FOSS/Linux user-space components. Ballmer must be jumping with joy.

Miguel's quote shows that RMS is right

Posted Feb 18, 2011 18:12 UTC (Fri) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]

Miguel is in fact a traitor to the open source movement. When someone "basks in joy" because two free operating systems (Symbian and Maemo/MeeGo) are being replaced by the most restrictive smartphone OS on the market, then this person is definitely not an open source supporter.

Miguel's quote shows that RMS is right

Posted Feb 22, 2011 18:16 UTC (Tue) by alex (subscriber, #1355) [Link]

"Miguel is in fact a traitor to the open source movement." Oh come on. This level of invective isn't helping anyone. Nor is the "open source movement" a single coherent mass all singing from the same hymn sheet. Besides RMS would be complaining about the use of open source being used when he is a champion of free software. There are plenty of issues that can be debated when talking about the relative merits of Mono vs other mobile platforms. And they are continuously re-hashed here and in other places. However I can totally understand where Miguel is coming from. Mono may well have a place in providing a common run-time that has the potential unify all the mobile platforms (except maybe iOS, has Apple lifted their "must use Objective-C" diktat yet?). While people are rightly suspicious of a potential ticking time bomb that implementing a Microsoft technology could mean other people are actively being sued for re-implementing the other GPL'd mobile run-time.