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rwest writes "The latest from news.com, an article Sun to offer Microsoft Office competitor for free. The interesting bit is about half way through, where Brian Croll, a marketing director in Sun's platforms and software group says that "In addition to giving the software away for free, Sun will make the original programming instructions, or 'source code', available under the Sun Community Source License". " This comes after yesterday's speculation about whether or not this would be open sourced.Update: 08/31 02:45 by H :NY Times also has an piece talking about the creation of Star Office as a Web app.

I recently read Po Bronson's sophomore effort, The First 20 Million is Always the Hardest (TF20MIATH), and had a few gripes about it. Click below to read mine, and to share your own critiques - compliments - comments - ramblings about the book. The First 20 Million is Always the Hardest author Po Bronson pages 237 publisher Random House rating 4/10 reviewer Jeff "hemos" Bates ISBN summary An attempt at writing a fictional Silicon Valley Story

Several months ago I read Bronson's latest book, The Nudist on the Late Shift . It was good - not quite Microserfs , but definitely worth the time I spent reading it.

So, with that in mind, and having heard a little bit about his other material, I kept an eye open for Bombardiers or TF20MIATH, and eagerly fell upon the first of the two that came to me.

Most of TF20MIATH's main characters are engineers, "iron-men" in the parlance of the book, who work for a research facility that's supposed to attract only the best and brightest. You aren't paid a lot of money to work there. You do it for the love of the work, and to prove you're an Iron Man, or "uber-mann." However, the work done at the lab does have commercial properties, and the lab is funded by commercial companies. The largest sponsoring company, much like AMD, is trying to compete with Intel. This fact creates some of the book's conflict.

The lead character, Andy, joins the lab after quitting his job at that psuedo-AMD company, but his desires to work at The Lab are (major summarization here) soon quenched by the other main character, Francis Benoit, who is constantly seeking to prove that he is the Super-Iron-Man of them all.

One of the ongoing battles of the book is between the powerful "big iron machines" the lab is known for developing and the evolving world of thin client, networked machines. Bronson's treatment of this conflict, coupled with the somewhat Messianic light that these cheap Internetworked computers will bring to the world writ large, is the books's central thought. It's a good thought, and I think it's one that has some validity. That is, as the world's population gets more education, and computers spread, I think things will get better. So does Bronson. And he says this again and again, in slightly different words each time.

The story itself, which in a way is a story about the world of the suits meeting the world of engineers, with the obvious party losing, falls short. The introduction of a female bit player who becomes Andy's girlfriend is contrived. Problems develop in the relationship, and we never hear if they are resolved or not. The disapperance of a fairly major character (Salman) is explained poorly, and is never mentioned again in any fashion.

Summary time: The story involves jealousy and politicking amongst the Iron Men Engineers while they as a caste also do battle with the Universe of the Suits. The main character must resolve issues with his girlfriend. All characters wrestle with problems, includings things like whether or not they will be fired, whether or not they can code something, and whether or not they can afford to buy better food.

It's not a bad book, it's just that unless this type of writing is your favorite, there are better books to read. There's a good book inside this one, but the problem is that the good book is only about one-third the length of the published version. Bronson is an author who seems to constantly be trying to figure out how to best tell a Silicon Valley story. In Nudist he did it succesfully, but in TF20MIATH he didn't. My recommendation: You won't regret reading this, but there's better stuff around..

You can buy TF20MIATH at Amazon.

tilly writes "The recent article, An Open Business Plan for Red Hat, Inc. (which appeared on /. as What if Red Hat Bought SCO) has inspired an interesting follow-up article on Freshmeat. "

disclaimer:Hemos owns shares in Red Hat. Not that makes any difference in what I post, but, hey, I figured you'd wanna know.

Thexder wrote to us with a curious piece on what RH should do with all it's new found wealth: buy SCO. It's a crazy idea, and gives me a headache when I try to analyze it, but the author does have some interesting points.

disclaimer:Hemos owns shares in Red Hat

Anonymous PIG writes "On August 19, NPR's Morning Edition aired a story about the ENIAC, the world's first computer, and it's forgotten inventors. It is archived on this page and you can listen to it directly at this link. " The story of how the creators were really screwed on the whole deal is interesting-definitely worth the download time.Update: 08/21 03:30 by H : I sit duly corrected-the first computer was not ENIAC. Arguably, it was Colossus, a British construction in 1943.Update: 08/21 02:18 by H : Alright, alright-stop e-mailing me with earlier computers *grin*. Zuse, Babbage's Engine. I'm saying the abacus, and leaving it at that.

Anonymous PIG writes "On August 19, NPR's Morning Edition aired a story about the ENIAC, the world's first computer, and it's forgotten inventors. It is archived on this page and you can listen to it directly at this link. " The story of how the creators were really screwed on the whole deal is interesting-definitely worth the download time.Update: 08/21 03:30 by H : I sit duly corrected-the first computer was not ENIAC. Arguably, it was Colossus, a British construction in 1943.Update: 08/21 02:18 by H : Alright, alright-stop e-mailing me with earlier computers *grin*. Zuse, Babbage's Engine. I'm saying the abacus, and leaving it at that.

Threnody writes " Great article about Windows 2000 delay. Apparently Linux has grown from negligible in the '97 poll to 13% today. This is the latest results from IDC, the pre-eminent measuring company. They were measuring business usage. They also talk about the fact that many major organizations are not interested in rolling out Win2k right away, because of being burned before.Update: 08/19 02:08 by H :I've also been informed by a number of people that DevX is currently running a poll along much the same lines.

After digging through three horrible voice-mail menus I finally got through to an E*Trade customer service representative named Jehnon Johnson who gave me the latest official skinny on the Red Hat IPO (as of 10:45 a.m. EDT) for "affinity" customers. If that's you, please read on. Update: 08/11 05:22 (5:22 p.m. PDT) by H : It's up and running-it's around 45$ per share, a three+ fold increase.

"You must reconfirm your conditional offer," Johnson said. To do this, you log into your E*Trade account, click on "Account Services," then "Other Questions," and click on "e-mail" to send an automatic e-mail reconfirming your offer. You can do this at any time, but Johnson advises "...doing it as soon as possible. The stock is being priced today."

Another alternative, Johnson, said, was to wait. As soon as Red Hat sets its final offering price - Johnson said, "I think it has been set at $14 per share" - E*Trade will send e-mail to everyone who has opened an E*Trade account and has money in it earmarked to buy Red Hat shares. This is the one that could come out during any two-hour period, any time. If you haven't reconfirmed already or don't do so immediately, you may want to check your e-mail hourly.

One big catch: if you only have $1000 or $1200 in your E*Trade account earmarked for Red Hat stock purchases, you need to send more. NOW! As in wire it, in accordance with the instructions on the E*Trade site. Otherwise you will not get any stock, according to Johnson.

Important Disclaimer: Please remember that Slashdot is not in the business of distributing investment news, and that things can change rapidly on the day a company does its IPO. If you have a direct financial interest in the Red Hat IPO, you should contact E*Trade directly for exact instructions and the latest news instead of getting your information from Slashdot. - Roblimo READ THIS OK, here's the deal. The official letter from E*Trade was sent, but it contains the wrong info as to how to confirm. Go in to the Account Services, and they say click on Other Questions at the bottom of page. It's not there-instead click on e-mail us on the right navbar. Inside of there, choose the other option, rather then a pre-set option, and it will take you to yet another page. From there, click on e-mail us. That should do it.

saurus wrote in to tell us that an announcement has appearedon E*trade proclaiming that the IPO share price for Red Hat will now be $12-$14. Everyone's getting really anxious to see what happens. Brace yourself. Update: 08/11 12:32 by H : It looks like the info was pulled-anyone have more details? Post below.

So like many of us this weekend, I saw the Blair Witch Project this weekend. I thought about writing a full blown review, but have opted against it. I enjoyed the movie a lot, but I'd really rather solicit comments on the movie. I do ask that anyone who wants to put spoilers in their comments try to warn people before they read anything that might spoil the movie. But what did you guys think of it?Update: 08/02 08:34 by H :FiNaLe wrote to say that August 2nd, at 9pm Eastern, on irc.scifi.com in #auditorium the Directors of The Blair Witch Project will be talking.

Krakus Irus wrote in with the alert that Apple has released the specs on the new Powerbook G3. Up to 400 mhz, USB, firewire, 20% thinner then the previous machines and two pounds lighter. 14.1 display-it looks nice. What we're waiting on is the news about the new consumer portable-that will be coming out today. Check the rumours about the new consumer book. Update: 07/21 03:19 by H : It's been announced. The new iBook-and it looks /really/ nice. Comes out in Sept. at 1599$US.

I've gotten a lot of mail, and seen this submitted - a porn site has sent mail using the Slashdot.org name, purporting to be Slashdot.org. They are not. We don't, and will not send mail out using your name. Click below for the full text of the message that was sent out. Update: 06/17 12:56 by H :Current going theory (thanks to Mark Rietman) is The list is the one maintained at distributed.net. This is because they used my distributed.net@rsoft.demon.nl adress (which i never use anywhere else). It's a list open to public (team stats-page --> memberslist) Update: 06/17 01:09 by CT : I just wanted to apologize. I'm getting a lot of hate mail, and I just want to reiterate that we didn't do this, and that I wish bad things would happen to the bastards who did this. I consider forging email to be among the worst of all net.crimes. And don't visit the site or you'll just encourage these pricks.

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Thomas Charron wrote to us with the latest Microsoft-Java ">news. Transvirtual, a "closely held start-up funded by Microsoft" has cloned aspects of Java. This new software called "Kaffe" will let programmers write Java that will run only on Windows. What's interesting is that on their homepage, Transvirtual seems committed to working with the Open Source idea - partnering with Cygnus. Does anyone have details clearing up these seeming contradictions? Update: 06/14 08:51 by H : Click below: Tim Wilkinson from Transvirtual e-mailed me. Here's the salient points: Everything they are doing with MS is Open Source, and runs all platforms it can, and they are not funded by Microsoft. They were incredibly misquoted by the Wall Street Journal.
1. Everything we're doing in conjunction with M$ is Open Source.

2. All the extensions we're implementing are cross-platform - they don't just run under Windows as the WSJ article implied (okay, COM integration is a problem if you've got no COM on your platform to integrate with I'll give you that). If developers use Delegates they'll work on Linux (or whatever) and J/Direct is just another JNI-style interface anyway. We're looking at providing some Win32 compatiblity libraries for commonly used J/Direct Win32 library calls.

3. M$ have *not* invested in us - we approached them to about making Kaffe run both Sun and M$ Java and they paid for the work to happen - but we insisted that the result would be put in the Open Source Kaffe version so users had the choice to use, or not to use, the extensions.

drdink wrote to let us know about a SlashNET forum with Mandrake of Enlightenment fame. It will be at 01:30 UTC (9:30pm EDT) today in #forum. Open discussion about the forum will be held in #forum.d. If you're new to SlashNET, irc.slashnet.org will point you at a random server, and us.slashnet.org will point you at a random US server. Hope to see people there!Update: 06/14 12:50 by H :Get the log here.

Alastair Johnson writes "Telecom New Zealand is proposing a 2c/min "modem tax" for all residential customers. NZ traditionally has free residential local calling (part of government requirements from Telecom). Telecom is hoping to get around this by getting all ISPs to get an 0867 number for which their clients can dial without the 2c/min tax, but the 0867 numbers get less priority on the exchanges. Check out the anti-0867 petition at Digital Edge. " The information page essentially says that Telecom will (post-August) allow the first 10 hours per month to be free, but a 2 cent/minute charge to all residential numbers calling 0867. Update: 06/13 10:17 by H : Mea Culpa-I misread, and misunderstood. Click below for a clarification from Gromit: Actually, what is says is that ISPs (*other* than Telecom) will have to offer 0867 numbers which will be free to call by residential users, but anyone dialling NON-0867 (i.e. local) ISP numbers will be charged 2c/min after 10 hours. In other words, a residential number dialling a local number will get a 2c/min charge (incidentally this goes against the deal the govt has with Telecom.)

Anonymous Piglet writes "Graydon Hoare has written a well thought-out essay on the problems with the bounty software model being promoted by organizations such as the Free Software Bazaar, sourceXchange, and CoSource. " Update: 06/11 12:23 by H : Norm J sent this tidbit our way: Cosource.com founders Bernie Thompson and Norm Jacobowitz have posted their responses to Graydon Hoare's Essay on the Problem with Bounty Software . It is available at the Cosource.com site.

PaulB writes "Intel's new Easy PC standard has some prototype systems ready for it, which you can read about on Wired. Very cool looking stuff, finally no more iMac envy. " You can see the photos of the machines on intel's website but they do all have those stupid looking jumpsuit dudes in the way. Update: 06/08 08:45 by H :SurplusBaggage wrote in with the Phillips 42" monitors. Price tag: $15k.

Emil writes wrote in to tell us that that John Carmack ^[?] has donated $10k to Mesa ^[?] to assist in the development of optimized 3d drivers for release with Mesa 3.1. Very cool. You can find out more about Id or check out The Mesa Website. Update: 05/13 04:24 by H :In somewhat related news, RealTime wrote to say "Precision Insight (the people funded partly by RedHat?) have made available their design documents for the 3D Direct Rendering Infrastructure for XFree86. The final package will be released under an XFree86 style license. "

cluening writes "I was shocked to see that one of the best poetry writers, Shel Silverstein, had died. Although not really technical in nature, I am sure his poems and drawings were enjoyed by a whole lot of the Slashdot community... " I've enjoyed several of his coffee tables books over the past winter-it's sad to see people like this go. Update: 05/11 04:25 by H :Thanks to Jesse Berney for sending us the Washington Post write-up about Shel.

Rob/Jeff and the hardware need a rest, Slashdotters need to be able to log on, and I have thousands of e-mails to read and sort through. These messages are a river of pain, and we could all use a breather. I'll be back tomorrow with "The Rights Of Geeks."

Heads Up. This is in the Be Careful What You Wish For Dept: A bunch of reporters and producers are trawling the site looking for geek kids to put on TV and radio, and to interview for newspaper stories. Journalism has suddenly discovered that this story is a little more complicated than violent video games and geek monsters.

Be careful, especially those of you who are younger. Some of these reporters get it, some don't. Some will worry about your best interests, and others won't. I've declined to give any e-mail addresses of kids relaying the realities of life in High School to reporters, since in some cases, radio and TV exposure would make their lives worse, not better.

It's an individual choice, but think about it. If you need guidance, please feel free to e-mail me, as I worked in newspapers and for a TV network before becoming a cyber-gasbag and writer.Update: 04/28 02:03 by H : Doug has also put up ListenToUs. This is a gathering place for us to communicate with each on social issues, especially in light of Littleton.

Dan Yocum (Hi Dan!) writes "Well, since Comdex is over and there isn't much threat of me getting whacked by their mob, I guess I can point people to a report of the "Linus at Fermilab" event, written up by Steven Adlerif they're interested. A pretty complete transcript of the event is included. The event was pretty technical and the report was written by a nuclear physicist, but it's still a pretty good read. " Update: 04/26 11:14 by H :Steve sent an update to let people take a look at his Comdex 99 update.

webslacker writes "According to Macintouch, several Apple sources are denying that Quicktime will actually be opensourced. It could just end up being a simple confusion of Quicktime viewers and Quicktime server, seeing as how news.com made it sound as if all of Quicktime is going to be opensource. " Here is Yesterday's Story on the subject. Update: 04/19 06:17 by H :Apple has said, however, that the newly unveiled QuickTime Streaming Server will be included under the Apple Public Source License.

A regular reader wrote in with this bit: "Linus Torvalds will be the speaker at Fermilab in Batavia, IL, 30 miles west of Chicago, on Sunday, April 18, at 5:30 pm. He will talk on Penguins & Computer Chips with a special introduction by John maddog Hall. Fermilab is open to the public during the day. " Wish I could be there :) Anyway, I remember reading something about Fermilab building a big cluster with Red Hat. Anyone care to refresh my memory? Update: 04/18 01:31 by H : Note: This is not open to the public. The lab is, but the speech is not...so, put your keys back on the counter, and think jealous thoughts.

Andy Tai writes "Eric Raymond and a number of other people have written an open letter to Microsoft about their consideration to "open source" Windows. Basically they want Microsoft to free important parts of Windows source code in the proper way, in light of Microsoft VP's quote: "There are all different types of ways you can do open source. We are looking into whether we should get into open source initiatives." The letter can be seen over here. " Update: 04/09 06:41 by H :Add your voice to the petition setup by Norm to call upon Microsoft to Open Source Windows.

I subtly changed comment spill- originally articles switched to indexed mode once the total number of comments exceded the spill. Now, the switch to indexed occurs when the number of siblings excedes the spill. This makes more sense to me- extremely deep conversations could cause indexing to occur even if there were only a few top level comments. Added an option to hide scores if you really don't like them. Lots of positive feedback on Highlight Threshold too: I love that feature personally. I'm still working on the Login problems- but I'm not getting very far. Its cookie related though. Also, its Hemos's 23rd birthday today, so send him mail and wish him well. Lets see how much mail he can get *grin*.Update: 03/28 01:37 by H : Well, thanks to all of you yahoos *grin* out there, I've been Slashdotted-or rather, my inbox has. 707 birthday messages-and fetchmail is still going. Thanks folks.

Jerky McNaughty writes "The ZDNet review of Gates' new book is pretty harsh. Noteable quotes: "he can't write worth a lick" and "Faced with the prospect of rereading this book, I would rather have my brains ripped out by a plastic fork." Ouch. " Well, combine that with the asking price and you've got a winner, ladies and gentlemen. Update: 03/24 11:13 by H : Yeah, yeah, the price is for a 24 pack of books. But it's funny, anyway.

A bunch of people wrote in about it, but trailer #2 is out there-weighing in at 25 megs uncompressed, it's in Quicktime format, and supposdly takes a more general view of the plot line then the previous trailer did. Get it before the server dies *grin*. Update: 03/11 08:41 by H :The rumour is that this is the /last/ trailer before the release of Episode I. I'm salivating. Update: 03/11 08:41 by H : Does anyone else find as funny as I do that the bad guys seem to be named "The Federation?"

A bunch of people wrote in about it, but trailer #2 is out there-weighing in at 25 megs uncompressed, it's in Quicktime format, and supposdly takes a more general view of the plot line then the previous trailer did. Get it before the server dies *grin*. Update: 03/11 08:41 by H :The rumour is that this is the /last/ trailer before the release of Episode I. I'm salivating. Update: 03/11 08:41 by H : Does anyone else find as funny as I do that the bad guys seem to be named "The Federation?"