Being the defacto windowing system for the most popular operating system family is a great success.
And if you believe Windows is the most popular OS family, then being the defacto windowing system for the second most popular OS family is still a great success.
The title mislead me. I thought he was going to argue that Google Wave is like X-Windows. He seems to be saying Google Wave can be used as the transport layer for a display service. There does not appear to be any reason why it can't be X11 on top of Google Wave other than the insane latency requirement.
EDIT: He seems to be more keen on replacing X11. I think a protocol which works with X would be better.
I'm not sure why they decided the display should be the server and the programs be the clients. It might be because the other way around is to have one client, the display, access many servers, the programs. That seems even less right to me. (On the other hand, that would make it easier to let a friend over the network look into one of your windows.)
Commercially speaking, X11 was a great success. It is the de facto windowing system for UNIX and UNIX-like systems despite all of the horrors it brings.
It seems to calculate the image's width to construct indentation. I think it would be easier to just enclose the comments with <dt></dt> and the child trees with <dd></dd>.
Marry a native speaker. Failing that get friends who are willing to converse with you exclusively in that language. Since it's Spanish, that shouldn't be very hard.
At my university, Intro to Prog. is in C and C++ (yes, both), and the course that immediately follows is in Scheme, some made up language (we had to build an interpreter for that language in Scheme) and Haskell (for the motivated students).
This article is difficult to understand because it is written as a flamebait rather than an objective critique.
Here is what I understand so far. His primary point is that for a FOSS project it is not easy to have it economically self-sustainable. I believe he is almost correct on this point and counter arguments exist elsewhere in this thread and on the internet. As for whether FOSS is useful or not or how to solve the problem described, he gives no suggestion. However, he does take many cheap shots at RMS and FOSS supporters.
Anyhow, my counterpoint, which I mentioned elsewhere in the thread, is the contribution of FOSS is beyond direct monetary compensation. For organizations FOSS provides cheap, commoditized off-the-shelf parts for internal software projects. For consumers, FOSS allows independence from software producers and system lock-ins. These benefits are real in economic terms and can not simply be waved away.
pcof's point still stands. Freedom is about lowering barriers, barriers which cost money to otherwise bypass. FOSS provides off-the-shelf parts for software engineers. Even Microsoft has used FOSS code in Windows.
What would I use this for? Is it simply a system to propagate programs to users? (Collaborative software development?) Will my data be on the WikiOS or on my hard drive?
> there is low motivation to vandalize (whereas some wikipedia articles are highly controversial)
Motivation can not be predicted in advance. If I make a program, could not a competitor add a change that "accidentally" introduces a security hole?
> sensitive portions of the OS require moderators approval in order to be modified
What would you define as sensitive?
> We are also working to implement code access security systems to address this issue.
What is your planned security model?
I like the fact that its is sandboxed from the host. Can a program on the WikiOS interact with host programs and if so, to what degree?
The word on the street is 4chan was being hit by a SYN attack. The ACKs were directed to various ISPs, one of whom was AT&T, who all blocked 4chan in response.