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With closed source software each competitor is forced to reinvent the wheel.

With closed-source software, each competitor is encouraged to bring their own individual perspective to the problems at hand.

The middle ground may get squeezed but the services area expands. Take the market for PHP programmers as an example. I've even seen jobs to write PHPNuke add-ons.

You're actually making my point. As a potential retail consumer for such a web front end (but too small a consumer to consider hiring a programmer) my choices are limited.

[regarding the price polarization effect]Like Apache in the web server market? Or MySQL/Postgres in the DB market

I don't know much about DBs, but IIRC, the Open Source community whined a long time about the lack of something called "transactions" in MySQL. Oracle had it first. Apache isn't GPL'd. Open Source that isn't GPL'd attracts, dare I say, a better class of developers--people who are open to the idea that they might need to commercialize at some later point in time, and have the foresight to seek out solutions that allow them to keep their options open.

Why did Apple choose BSD? I personally love the free PNG and JPEG source, and would happily contribute bug-fixes to them. Just one problem: I've never found a bug in either one. Instead, I've released a few simple things like USFlag as my way of "giving back". And there was no need for a coercive license to make me do that when it made sense for me to do it.

For a good example of price polarization, Look at GIMP vs. Photoshop, and then try finding good shareware for $20-$100 that does similar things using an open standard file format. I'm willing to be proved wrong on this. A rigorous study would be difficult, and I'm not aware of any unbiased research. I would even settle for good inexpensive, currently maintained shareware that handles PSDs. Maybe I just haven't found the right package.

The Smithsonian made at least one mistake which I pointed out here and later backed up with photos.

I visited the museum several months after the pictures were taken, and the mistake was still there. There was not even a piece of tape over it or anything. Now, I realize nobody likes to see tape over a sign in a museum, but are facts important or are they only concerned about appearances?

Then of course there is the possibility that Intel donated a lot of money to the museum. The Smithsonian has had some corporate entanglements lately. I'm as much for small government as anybody, but don't do it halfway. Either fund the museum fully so that it doesn't have to have corporate logos all over it, or totally defund it. If you visit the museum, you will see heavy involvement from the Discovery Channel and some other sponsors.

Then of course there is that other bit where they had a poll in the museum that was supposed to track approval ratings for politicians among museum vistors. I visited that a few times during the Clinton administration, and the numbers for Democratic leaders were all suspiciously pegged at 54%, as if they had throttled negative responses.

The fall in prestige and other management issues at the Smithsonian are well documented. The bottom line? I don't trust the Smithsonian. Sad but true.

The Smithsonian made at least one mistake which I pointed out here and later backed up with photos.

I visited the museum several months after the pictures were taken, and the mistake was still there. There was not even a piece of tape over it or anything. Now, I realize nobody likes to see tape over a sign in a museum, but are facts important or are they only concerned about appearances?

Then of course there is the possibility that Intel donated a lot of money to the museum. The Smithsonian has had some corporate entanglements lately. I'm as much for small government as anybody, but don't do it halfway. Either fund the museum fully so that it doesn't have to have corporate logos all over it, or totally defund it. If you visit the museum, you will see heavy involvement from the Discovery Channel and some other sponsors.

Then of course there is that other bit where they had a poll in the museum that was supposed to track approval ratings for politicians among museum vistors. I visited that a few times during the Clinton administration, and the numbers for Democratic leaders were all suspiciously pegged at 54%, as if they had throttled negative responses.

The fall in prestige and other management issues at the Smithsonian are well documented. The bottom line? I don't trust the Smithsonian. Sad but true.

A few years ago I did this little animated GIF of a snowball coming at the viewer. Last year I got a few deep links, but this year it really took off. At first, I reacted by renaming the file and switching it so that they saw another GIF that said "you need to give me credit and copy the image to your own server". Yes, that's right, the GIF is FREE TO USE as long as you give me credit and host it on your own server, but people were too lazy to fulfill even that simple request.

I contemplated several solutions, none of which were satisfactory. Eventually I decided to insert a (C) 2001 VRML3D.COM frame into the GIF so that any site using it would have my copyright notice in it. This doesn't solve the bandwidth problem, but at least I get credit.

I had been thinking that if I decided to do more GIFs, it would be a PiTA because I would have to find a way to protect my bandwidth. I mean, who wants to hit their hard transfer limit just because some yuk-a-puk wants to put a GIF on some message forum? Message forums that allow IMG tags are the *biggest* offenders.

Now if I ever decide to do more GIFs like this again, it's nice to know the law is on my side. The only question I have is the question a lot of others have too: What's a thumbnail? In the case of the animated GIFs, they are already thumbnail sized, but if a whole bunch of people start posting them on those stupid web forums it could suck quite a bit of bandwidth.

My reply to post #2239121 violated the lameness filter. Something about postsubj compression filter. That lameness filter is, well... lame.

The idealists may not start out wanting to f*** you, but all too often they enter what I like to call the "dictator's delusion".

It works something like this:

Step 1. "The World would be great if everybody (blank)ed". This is the essence of idealism.

Step 2. A few people will (blank) but not everybody. Laws are passed to encourage people to (blank).

Step 3. Encouraging people to (blank) becomes a proxy for making the world a better place.

Step 4. The delusion is complete. The leaders of the revolution totally forget about making the world a better place, and cling stubbornly to the ideal that (blank) will do that. They forget the fundamental laws like "love thy neighbor" and cling to their preconceived notions of what is best, even when it is demonstrably flawed. Two famous examples: The Pharisees in the Bible and the leaders of any "communist" nation refusing to reform while the proletariat starves. Both groups started out with an ideal. In the first case it was religious, and in the second place political. The result is the same though.

I hope you get this. I can't tell you how many times I've frustrated people who try to pigeon-hole me into either a "leftist" or "rightest" category. Both are "ideals" and flawed because There is no algorithm for right living.

I think I probably summed it up best in this rather off-the-wall essay.

1. Everytime you hit backspace, it sends you back to the last page. I don't think I really want to train my fingers to forget what backspace does in a normal shell.

2. It looks like a good flash alternative except... The traditional flash developer uses flash because it has decent development tools that a graphic arts person can understand. Are these people going to drop everything to learn Tk?

3. Number 2 might not be a problem if it ran on Linux and was under an OSI certified license. At least the geeks who like programming, graphics, and Linux might use it. But NO, they targeted IE, and the license has some issues. Aren't the X fonts free?

My recommendations: 1. come out with a Linux version. 2. work out the license issues to the point where it is MPL / LGPL compatable so that it can be plugged into Mozilla. 3. Offer secured EiC as an alternative to that other funky language.

Shoot! If they followed my recommendations, it'd be Scrubbed C (I wrote that before I knew what a VM was. If I were to write that today, I would forget about preprocessing the language and propose a sandbox instead)

1. Everytime you hit backspace, it sends you back to the last page. I don't think I really want to train my fingers to forget what backspace does in a normal shell.

2. It looks like a good flash alternative except... The traditional flash developer uses flash because it has decent development tools that a graphic arts person can understand. Are these people going to drop everything to learn Tk?

3. Number 2 might not be a problem if it ran on Linux and was under an OSI certified license. At least the geeks who like programming, graphics, and Linux might use it. But NO, they targeted IE, and the license has some issues. Aren't the X fonts free?

My recommendations: 1. come out with a Linux version. 2. work out the license issues to the point where it is MPL / LGPL compatable so that it can be plugged into Mozilla. 3. Offer secured EiC as an alternative to that other funky language.

Shoot! If they followed my recommendations, it'd be Scrubbed C (I wrote that before I knew what a VM was. If I were to write that today, I would forget about preprocessing the language and propose a sandbox instead)

I had the same idea quite some time ago.

I've worked a little with EiC which is an Open Source (Artistic license) package that allows you to run C programs as scripts on many platforms (but it does not have a portable binary VM format).

I have also written a VM of my own, and a parser for C99, but they are not releasable quality yet. If I ever do release it, it'll be either BSD or artistic.

I'm not really plowing a great deal of effort into this, because in order to gain wide acceptance, it would have to be free, and well... there's that pesky money issue.

When I saw this, my jaw dropped... but there is no Windows or Mac version. If they come out with a Windows version, this may be the one I've been waiting for. It would be so nice to see Java just curl up and die. It was a bad idea right from the start. I don't care if this guy releases his stuff as Open Source or not. Simply by putting a C/C++ VM on my box, and having my C/C++ skills be important for both stand-alone *and* internet applications, he would be doing a great service.

Too long for /. Go to: http://vrml3d.com/motive/publicsw.htm

please include an alternate method of running untrusted software on your local computer!

http://vrml3d.com/open/#name5

This is only a very small beginning. We need much more work in this area. We need small, fast, secure VMs that can run *any* language on *any* machine. EiC comes close to meeting the any machine part, but not the any language part.

Og go Sourceforge make bug report. Sourceforge make error.

screenshot: http://www.vrml3d.com/temp/error.gif

I had written on these issues quite some time ago, and decided to keep my thoughts to myself, since they were a bit disturbing. However, since the author of the Post article has said many similar things, I thought I would post my thoughts here

...is that the /mbr switch for fdisk is undocumented. Now I never bother to remember command line switches for DOS commands, because I know that I can almost always get help by typing /? after the command, but the /? help for fdisk doesn't mention /mbr.

I experienced this first hand when I experimented with RedHat 4.2. I only hope that MS also will be updating future versions of fdisk to include /mbr in the /? help.

The only problem with this is that while it's possible to have 'free beer' without having 'free software' it's not possible to have 'free software' without also having 'free beer'.

The previous poster's hypothetical company with an innovative idea cannot hope to get off the ground if they give away their flagship product right from the start

After seeing what the standardization process did to VRML, I can see how this will be good not only for Sun but for Java also.

The standardization process for VRML allowed input from all kinds of people. Some of these people were 3d engine writers who found that they had a hard time implementing some of VRML-1 features. The result? VRML97 cannot do some things that VRML-1 could. Obviously the later version can do more, but there was no rational reason for them to go backwards in some areas and forwards in others, except the fact that it was put together by a committee.

Sun is not stupid. They realize that great ideas and innovations seldom come out of committees.

Suppose they decide to come out with a later version of Java that's not a byte code, but a compressed 32bit word code (maybe this would have some advantage in processing Java VM instructions, maybe it wouldn't, it's just a hypothetical.) Now, if this were in a standards committee, you can be sure that a lot of people would push to specify that the VM be little-endian, because that's how intel is. But then Sun would have to kludge Java to make it run better on its own big-endian architecture.

How would such a kludged, hodge-podge language benefit the Java community?

Besides, the standard for the Java VM is Already Open

AC as always... you know why.

Can you provide the various features that businesses are accustomed to such as 24hr tech support and net 30? Most importantly, can you supply "nobody ever got fired for buying a server from this guy"? AC as always because there are too many logons in this world

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One thing you almost never hear discussed in regards to trade is what gets traded by accident.

Some sources have attributed the black death of the middle ages to increased trade, which allowed the rats that carried the black death to spread more readily throughout Europe.

In more recent times, we've witnessed the destruction of the Chestnut tree, various strains of influenza, and a few other pests that are less dramatic.

These things are very hard for economists to take into account when the do all these studies that show how trade benefits the economy. Forget about competing with 3rd world labor. Do we want to compete with 3rd world pests?

Sorry for straying a bit off-topic. As far as what was said about corporatism, I mostly agree. "Mostly", because the essay was a bit too long so I only skimmed parts of it.

AC as always, because there are enough logons in the world already.

In my Father's house there are many mansions, if it were not so I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself: that where I am,there ye may be also. (KJV - John 14:2-3)

I always wondered about that passage. Now it makes sense.

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