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Gnome Do + Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles
Posted by isecore on January 15th, 2008
I’m having a hard time deciding on whether to write about these two subjects. So, I’m going to forge ahead and actually write something about them. However, since neither really is involving enough to qualify for their own post I’ll just slap ‘em together and combine them.
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I discovered Gnome Do a few weeks ago. Or was it maybe longer? I really can’t remember. Gnome Do is a neat application that takes a lot of inspiration from Quicksilver. Mac users will most likely be familiar with Quicksilver since it’s a very popular application. I wouldn’t say it’s genius, but it’s pretty damn smart none the less.
Gnome Do is very similar. I’ve been using the Gnome Deskbar for a year, and it has a lot of similarities as well with Quicksilver. Gnome Do however is much more similar and even though it’s less powerful than the Deskbar in some ways, it’s also more powerful than the Deskbar in other ways.
Do is in very early stages of development right now, but it’s fully usable. It installs easily for us Ubuntu-users, which is nice. The only real drawback in my opinion is that it’s written in Mono, the free implementation of Microsofts proprietary .Net-language. I have some minor philosophical grievances with that, but Do runs fine and is very fast.
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I earlier today noticed that a TV-series based in the Terminator-franchise had been launched. It’s called “The Sarah Connor Chronicles” and is a complete and utter turd in every department. I will never understand why everyone is so desperate to keep raping what was once a great franchise. I absolutely love the first two James Cameron-helmed movies, and consider the third one to be a turkey of galactic proportions. After that I became really disgusted by how various producers seem intent on keeping on ruining this excellent concept with cheezy crap.
This TV-series strongly underscores that disgust. I watched the pilot, and it’s absolutely awful. Wooden acting, boring scripting, silly “effects” and overall just horrible abuse of excellent subject matter. I don’t understand why people couldn’t leave it be after the second movie, when even James Cameron himself stated that he was finished with the concept.
No, the “Sarah Connor Chronicles” is a mediocre production at best, and at it’s worst it’s an insult to us fans. It’s completely trite, derisive and clichéd. Avoid at all costs.
License
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January 15th, 2008 at 16:46
Hey, I’m happy you like GNOME Do. I think if you look into Mono a bit more, many if not all of your philosophical grievances will evaporate. Do is written in C#, not Mono–Mono is not a language. Also, C# is not proprietary. Like Java, the language is a standard ratified by an impartial organization. Unlike Java, Mono is free “all the way down,” meaning that the bytecode interpreter (VM) and JIT and all that cool stuff is free, too. Some of the things that cause people to worry about Mono are MS’s patent threats, which could not concern the parts of Mono based on the published standards.
January 15th, 2008 at 18:45
David: I’m sure you’re right about that. I’m not a programmer and thus not up to speed on the nitty-gritty details of Mono. I know that it’s more of a collective term for various technologies (just like AJAX isn’t one set of things either, but various co-operating technologies) but I have a strong reaction to anything even remotely linked to that great beast from Redmond.
(For the record, I really dislike Java. Even though Sun is doing a lot to rectify old sins I still have huge ethical issues with Java.)
None the less, I really think your application shows promise. Keep up the good work, it’s people like you who make FOSS work.