Slashback: Mainstreaming, Lux, Ports

Welcome to the Slashback. This time around you'll find bits about the speed of light, project Monterey, and coverage of the recently departed (alas!) San Jose LWCE. And word from Microsoft about porting Office apps to Linux gets my thumbs up -- your thumb direction may vary. [Updated by timothy with a special bonus story, 22 Aug. 0:30 GMT]

Show of hands if you think Windows is easy to use ... If I'm driving a car with a radio, I usually fiddle with the dials way down around 88-90 FM to listen to NPR, for Car Talk, All Things Considered, and the occasional science show. Now AlKini gives me another reason: "National Public Radio's "High Tech" section covers the Linux World Expo: Linux Moves to Heart of Corporate America (top item ATM).

NPR's Chris Arnold for All Things Considered: www.npr.org/ramfiles/atc/200008 16.atc.07.ram (Real Audio)"

A major issue raised by the High Tech section article is ease of use; maybe I'm crazy, but putting on Mandrake and going nuts with the included programs is pretty darn easy. Putting on 98 and NT I thought was rather a nightmare.

Well, surely all this has shown ... something! OK. Perhaps now everyone can stop submitting the story about the experiment which has been reported as showing a previously unheard of increase in the speed of light. drinkypoo writes: "It turns out that 'Not only does the speed of light remain unsurpassed, but Wang's experiment wasn't even about that.' To be specific, 'the team developed a method of manipulating the wavelengths of a beam of light, thereby altering the way it arrives at its destination. Because short wavelengths become longer and long ones become shorter, the natural fanning outward that marks a light pulse is eliminated; consequently the shape of the pulse at its destination appears the same as at its origin.' It seems that the journalistic frenzy and a NEC press release are to blame. Salon Magazine is carrying the full story here."

Reports have been greatly exaggerated. We reported a few days ago that IBM's Project Monterey had been killed. Not so, says dentar, who writes: "I am attending SCO Forum 2000, and contrary to what was published in Sm@rt-aleck Reseller, IBM is NOT ditching Monterey. It is going to be called AIX-5L. (NOT AIX-RL like the article says). The Sm@rt reseller article is very poorly researched and is pure yellow journalism. In fact, IBM is very ticked about the article."

Where are the software-release-date betting pool sites? fonixmunkee writes: "Found an interesting story on BetaNews regarding Microsoft reportedly working on porting some of their software to linux. Check it out here."

For either P.R. or experimental purposes at least, though, doesn't it seem like Microsoft will offer some Linux software soon? While there's often no accounting for corporate decision making, to ignore the large, vibrant, growing Linux market would be to ... ignore a large, vibrant and growing market. Fine by me; I never much like having my words mangled by Word, and I have never pined for Outlook.

The more numerous the laws ... werdna writes: "Counsel for Napster, Inc. just submitted their initial brief on Appeal, explaining why the preliminary injunction should be reversed. The brief sets other arguments, any one of which could be a basis for reversal.

Whatever may be said of Judge Patel's decision, she set forth her reasoning squarely, which made it possible for Mr. Boies to crisply and concisely join the issue: Whether the test for contributory infringement of an internet service will be that the services has a "mere capacity for substantial non-infringing uses" (the test adopted by the Supreme Court for VCR's), or Judge Patel's new creation of a "present primary purpose " test, in direct contravention of the Supreme Court's decision in the Betamax case. The answer to this question can have broad-sweeping impact on the internet as a whole.

Interestingly, the brief shows that the Ninth Circuit itself originally adopted the "primary purpose" test when it first reviewed the Betamax case, noting that the Supreme Court expressly rejected that argument there. It is sometimes advocacy to a judge to remind them that the District Court they are reviewing just made the same mistake they made years ago."

Comments

yeah seriously

[ArchieBunker]

Everyone here claims windows is the OS for idiots or the average dumb consumer, yet have trouble installing it :)

Re:Windows is easy

[drinkypoo]

Most significant to me is the fact that it's easy to get almost any hardware to work with windows.

Drivers for everything common are included with Win2k and WinME. Win98 SE has a pretty good collection of drivers, too. Drivers for a great number of uncommon things are included as well, though I suspect that predominantly is made up of products from people in bed with Microsoft.

And getting your games to work with your 3d accelerator couldn't be easier -- When it works. Which, I will readily admit, is not always. Still, there's more than one reason Windows is my gaming platform of choice. I just wouldn't dream of using it for a server.

Funny +MS ports to Linux

[Kabloona]

the line "I have never pined for Outlook" is hilarious.

Seriously though, I doubt microsoft will port much if anything to Linux. The reason MS dominates so often is that any windows box you buy, comes straight from the manufacturer with lots of its software installed. Of course IE beat out Netscape in browser wars, its right there on the desktop when you boot up for the first time. Similarly, I dont think people, especially not-so-techy people, will go out of they're way to install new MS software on a Linux box when it comes with free defaults ready to go. Add to that the fact that much of Linux's appeal is that it is free, who would want to ruin that by shelling out for some proprietary software?

peas,
-Kabloona

if napster looses.....

[delmoi]

We are all pretty screwed

Any kind of new, filesharing technology will be pushed aside for the bland, boring, corporate controlled web.

The primary purpose of VCRs, before video tape rentals most certainly was Copyright infringement, but if it hadn't been allowed the video rental industry never would have started.

Similarly, any new technology that moves the Internet away from the highrachal, centrally controllable Web model to a more Peer-to-peer model could be used readily for copyright infringement. This judgment could mean that any technological advances in certain directions must contain copyright controls, limits on what the user can do with information on their own computer, in order to even be developed.

When Radio first came out, it was everybody talking to everybody else. It was going to liberate everyone, and free the information for the tech nerds. But we all know what happened, air filled with the meaningless chatter of a few, franchise radio stations owned by Disney. I would like it if that didn't happen to the Internet.

We don't know how bad things are in north korea, but here are some pictures of hungry children. -- CNN

Re:if napster looses.....

[Mandomania]

My Intro to EE professor told us a story about the preliminary discussions at Sony concerning VCPs (video cassette players). Some VIP at Sony asked "Why would someone want to see movies at home when they could go out and see them?".

One of the designers turned and said "Porn", and that was that.
--
Mando

Damn, I told that joke at work and noone got it.

[HamNRye]

We recently migrated to Outlook due to corporate, and I made the comment: I never thought anything would make me pine for CC Mail again....

I work in a Unix shop where we all have to share one Winblows box for e-mail and I must say that Outlook is a major PIA. (Pain in the Artichokes)

But at least the web access works with Netscape. (At least until the next Exchange patch...)

And more to the point made by Kabloona, MS cannot port anything to Linux without losing much of the mindshare they currently enjoy. Our desktops are getting slicker, (Check out KDE2) our uptime is still better, and our reputation is better.

But heck, I just applied for a job as a Solaris admin and got: "Could you send me your resume in DOC format??" I sent it as a perl app instead.

~Hammy
"We're all Devo!" ~Boogie Boy

Re:Silly Editorial Bias

[FPhlyer]

Your right. Slashdot is editorial biased against Windows and just about anything Microsoft. There is a "reason" for this (however "unreasonable" it may be.) Just as the Macintosh was built around a backround of "beating the enemy, IBM", Linux is kind of being built around a background of "beating the enemy, Microsoft." This makes Linux an interesting candidate for sucess. I agree, a lot of the anti-microsoft clamor that we so often hear is based more on emotion than on pure fact (what you refered to as "FUD".) I work primarily on Windows NT based workstations, and for the most part they have proven to be very stable (the biggest drawback is the numerous reboots that I have to do when installing new software.) I disagree with your statement about installing '98. I have had more problems installing '98 then with any other operating system. While not necessarily a "difficult" install, it is one that tries my patience. I find the installation Windows NT 4.0 and RedHat Linux (text mode install) to both be way more intuitive and user-friendly. My preference for Linux does not abound from a feeling that Linux is technically superior. It stims from the political side of the open source movement. I like the idea of software that is free (as in both beer and speech.)

superluminal light propagation (?)

[mreece]

It does seem that someone... whether NEC or reporters, I'm not sure... was a little irresponsible with the "faster-than-light" story. Even the title of the Nature article, "Gain-assisted superluminal light propagation," seems a little misleading. Although all the articles clearly indicated that this experiment was not at odds with Einsteinian relativity, none of them really explained it.

I don't know that much about physics, but I knew something weird was happening here, and I found a little bit of explanation in the Feynman Lectures on Physics (Volume 1, Chapter 31).

For light of frequency omega, in a material with electrons having resonant frequency omega0, the index of refraction is:

n = 1 + (Ne^2)/(2 epsilon0 m (omega0^2 - omega^2))

The dependence on omega shows that a material transmits light at different speeds, depending on the frequency (or, from a different point of view, the wavelength) of the light. This phenomenon is called "dispersion." Now, for some frequencies, (omega0^2 - omega^2) will be negative and n can be less than one, implying "superluminal" propagation in the sense that light of that frequency may be transmitted faster than "c", the speed of light in vacuum.

Feynman notes that the difference in index of refraction indicates a "that the phase shift which is produced by the scattered light can be either positive or negative." However, he is careful to point out that signals themselves are not transmitted faster than c, because transmission of a signal depends on the index of refraction at multiple frequencies. The index tells the speed at which the node of the wave travels, but the node in itself can carry no information. In order to transmit information, the frequency of the wave must be varied.

So, it appears that the idea of sending light at "faster-than-light" speeds is an old one, well understood by physicists. The theory of relativity has not been violated, and this has been known for some time. Feynman, apparently, taught it to beginning physics students at Caltech in the 1960s. News sources must have simply been attempting to make the story into something more appealing to the public. "Laws of physics break down!" But in reality, no laws have been violated, physics is fundamentally unchanged, and the net result seems to have been a confused public.

Re:superluminal light propagation (?)

[mreece]

I'm not familiar with any way in which quantum tunneling can be used to send signals, but I don't know enough to say for sure whether it is possible or not.... I thought the point was simply that quantum particles had a nonzero probability of crossing potential barriers that classical particles could not. Is there more to tunneling?

Note: Quantum physics and a bit of math follow. I've highlighted the important stuff in bold in case you don't want to read the boring details. Or, you can just skip to the last paragraph.

However, I am somewhat more familiar with the "quantum teleportation" of a photon, and my understanding of this is that the actual signal transfer happens by classical means, and is not superluminal.

The quantum teleportation depends on an "EPR" device (named after the famous Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen thought experiment). This device can produce a pair of entangled photons, so that when a measurement is performed on one, the state of the other is determined. That is, the particles start out in some entangled state, but when particle A is measured, it will become either a |0> or a |1>. If A is |0>, B is |1>, and if A is |1>, B is |0>. They are said to be "orthogonal."

The basic idea is that A and the signal are entangled during a measurement, and this affects B, so that B becomes similar to the signal. Now, in order to determine the signal from B, one has to know not only the state of B, but the result of the measurement that entangled A and the signal. Thus, that result has to be transmitted by a classical method, which can't be faster than light. The advantage of quantum teleportation, as I understand it, is not faster transfer, but more accurate transfer.

Here's a more detailed explanation (let's hope I get the details right): the quantum teleportation method has a signal. Let's call it S. Now, Alice wants to send Bob the signal. Alice has a particle "A" (from the EPR device) and a particle "S." Bob also has a particle from the EPR device, particle "B". Particles A and B are entangled, in the state k(|0A>|1B> + |1A>|0B>). (k is a normalization constant = 1/sqrt(2)). When measured, either they will become |0A>|1B>, or |1A>|0B>. Particle S is in some unknown superposition of states, a|0S> + b|1S>. So Alice starts out with the overall state k(|0A>|1B> + |1A>|0B>)(a|0S> + b|1S>). She performs a Bell measurement on A and S. The Bell measurement entangles the photons, thus producing one of the four eigenstates:
PSI(+/-) = k(|0A>|1C> +/- |1A>|0C>)
PHI(+/-) = k(|0A>|0C> +/- |1A>|1C>)
Now, the combination of states (of A and S) that Alice begins with can be rewritten as:
(1/2)[ |PSI+>(a|1B>+b|0B>) + |PSI->(a|1B>-b|0B>) + |PHI+>(a|0B>+b|1B>) + |PHI->(a|0B>-b|1B>) ],
so that entangling the photons causes the state of particle B to become one of the four terms in parentheses. There is a nonzero probability (25%, to be specific) that any of these four states will occur.

Due to the way the beam-splitter technology used in the device works, the teleportation is only successful if the |PSI+> or |PSI-> state results; otherwise, there is a probability that either the |PHI+> or |PHI-> state caused the observed result. As far as I know, 50% efficiency is the best possible for quantum teleportation.

Still, the key point is that, in order for Bob to know if he has the exact state S that was intended to be teleported (that is, the |PSI+> eigenstate was measured so that a|1C>+b|0C> is the current state), or if he needs to apply a phase shift (that is, the |PSI-> eigenstate was measured so that a|1C>-b|1C> is selected), Alice has to tell Bob which Bell eigenstate her detectors measured. And that information must be transferred classically. And so, quantum teleportation does not transfer information faster than light.

By the way, I think a lot of these quantum teleportation experiments happened at IBM. There's a web site at http://www.research.ibm.com/ quantuminfo/teleportation/ that gives some information about the researchers who have done this. Also, the Los Alamos (xxx.lanl.gov or arXiv.org) preprint archive has a nice paper at quant-ph/0007106, written by Hai-Woong Lee and Jaewan Kim, if you want more detail.

In short, it seems that, no matter how clever scientists become, nature always leaves some sort of catch that keeps us from sending information faster than light and violating causality.

Re:Napster

[Chris Johnson]

That would depend on whether noncommercial copying and exchange constitutes infringement. You may behave like taping albums and stuff off the TV is illegal, if this pleases you, but that doesn't make it true. There is such a thing as fair use and one criterion is that the copying and exchange doesn't take place commercially. Claiming that this exchange intrinsically makes the situation commercial leads to a contradiction that renders pre-existing fair use meaningless- clearly if you tape your own CD, this is enabling you to not re-purchase the same music on audiotape, therefore home taping is commercial too... except that the law says home taping is fair use, and not by accident.

Follow the reasoning, respect the law and you can plainly see there's substantial question as to whether Napster exchange is even infringement. It's noncommercial, and is not even verbatim copying of the exact bits of the commercial product, merely an approximation much like audiotapes.

On the other hand, if you _don't_ respect the law you're welcome to imply whatever you like, but it seems strange to turn to the law for shelter when you aren't even interested in respecting what it has already had to say on the matter.

Monterey is long dead...

[toppk]

hey, monterey is long dead. The code isn't, but monterey was ibm & sco's new unix, then sequent came on board, then IBM bought sequent, then caldera bought SCO.

So, does IBM kill the cool x86/ia-64 code? Or do they just keep the code, excuse themselves from the SCO commitment. Of course!

Now it's just them in monterey, no one else, so do they kill the brand they've been hyping for the last two years? Nope.. Watch, they'll probably rename AIX to Monterey (think warp or domino).

why is this so damn clear to me?

Windows is easy...but Linux is Fun

[Syllepsis]

Before calling anyone biased, one has to remember what /. is for: a bunch of digital grease monkeys poking around in their computers. This is a Nerd news site.

For the casual web surfing game player, windows is clearly easier to get set up and use. It came with the computer to begin with...so the install process never even took place, and wizards are provided so that 97% of the populace can get their AOL up and running without cracking a manual.

However, if you are more interested in poking around and just looking at what all that nifty hardware actually does and how it interacts, I think poking around in the /proc tree is much more easy to do than navigating through a bunch of meaningless windows in the control panel. As a friend of mine demonstrated, it is easier to hook a remote control car up to the parallel port with joystick control in linux than in windows NT or 98. Try to get ttyquake running in windows, I imagine it is difficult.

The point is, for Nerds linux provides a better platform for monkeying around and doing inane things with computer science than windows. To do nerdy things, (outside of gaming which does not really count) linux is just easier to play with. Since /. caters to nerds and not normal people, one shouldn't consider normal uses when arguing about regular uses. The question should be: upon which os is it easier to write a driver for your homemade usb blender? On which os is it easier to pipe revving noises to the speaker when the load goes up? Under which os is it easier to send a message to your beeper when the ports get scanned?

Outside of the enigmatic and mysterious sect of the BSDs, I cant understand why any computer geek could not enjoy linux for just being nerdy.

Re:Yellow Journalism

[craw]

Yellow journalism was the realm of William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. They liked any bogus headline or story that could sell more newspapers. H.L. Mencken was an extreme critic of the disparity, hypocrisy, and problems of American society of the early 1900's. To call Mencken a "yellow" journalist does him a major disservice.

Re:Windows is (NOT) easy

[nels_tomlinson]

I disagree with this idea that "windows is easy to install". Here is a little rant that I sent off a couple days ago on the subject which explains why.

\begin{rant}

I've installed Linux on several machinces in the last year, including a
bleeding-edge laptop, an older laptop, and a couple of desktops, one
overclocked. I've installed windows (mostly 98, once 2000) on all of
them at least once, as well.

Windows WILL find the hardware, every time, and doesn't have the right
drivers for it, and will drive your 21 inch monitor hooked to a big,
fast 3d card at 640x480x8bit until you take it by the hand, after many
reboots, and lead it to a driver for your card, and another for your
monitor, which YOU must dig up. Then you must reboot AGAIN!

Contrast this to Linux: it correctly detects the card, just as does
windows, and then loads a good driver for it. It offers you a sensible
default resolution, and you're off. All the other hardware is handled
similarly by Linux: it finds it, gives you a decent driver, and things
just work. The windows example is also standard: it finds some kind of
hardware, loads a lowest common denominator driver, and then expects YOU
to do the work of making it work right.

Don't try to install Win98 to replace NT, by the way ... fdisk gets
baffled, scandisk crashes, setup.exe craps out ... the problem is that
they don't know that NTFS isn't FAT, and die in an uninformative
manner. I had to use Linux's fdisk to repartition as ef2s, then MSfdisk
thought that the partition was "unformatted", or some such, and could
work with it.

In short, it seems to me that Windows is MUCH harder to install than is
Linux. Windows does have a fancy graphical installation tool, not quite
so nice as Corel's, perhaps, but it really doesn't DO anything for you!
Linux, with or without the eye-candy, gives you far fewer hassles, far
fewer reboots than even win2000, and seems to me to require a bit less
knowlege of the hardware, as well. Linux only requires that you guess
which interrupt your soundcard wants. That you can get by trial and
error (some day I'll write down which one works, so I don't have to try
the guessing game at each install on a given machine).

Windows requires that you have the manufacturer's driver on hand for
EVERY part in your machine! For a frankenstein box, assembled out of
old parts, that can be a big problem. You have to know what you have,
and go find the drivers, and on and on. First stop, the FCC website, to
try to find out who made each board, and then go find out that the
manufacturer is out of business and no more drivers. For a Compaq (don't
buy Compaq if you want to run windows), knowing your hardware is still a
big problem. Finding the drivers on the Compaq disk is painfull. For
Linux, all the drivers are on one CD, and the installer finds the right
one for you. THAT'S easy.

Yes, Linux app's do seem to be lagging a bit yet, but Staroffice 5.2 is
getting pretty close to MSOffice. You will soon be able to do
Microsofty things as well as MS, and serious work is already much easier
on Unix. By the way, administering NT on a home system doesn't seem any
easier to me than the same chores on Linux. Maybe even harder, since at
least with Linux, I know what's behind the GUI. You never really know
that with MS.

It always bugs me to hear this "Linux is hard to install" line, since
that exactly contradicts my experience.

\end{rant}

Nels Tomlinson

About Linux on Corprate Desktops....

[HomerJ]

Ok, here is a point that I'm sick of hearing, and am going to put to rest right now. Mircosoft products for linux isn't the reason it's not on business desktops.

If that were the case, MacOS would have the lion's share of the market here. Both IE and Office for the MacOS are better then their WIndows counterparts. IE5 being the most standards compliant browser there is. Office for MacOS being just as good. And with Office 2001 being completly carbonized, it will also be better then their Windows version.

There are reasons that people say why businesses aren't using linux on their corprate desktops. Inconsistant user interface, lack of bussiness apps for linux, fear of open source, etc. The MacOS doesn't have any of these "shortcommings". So why doesn't it own this market? Bases on the reasons that people give for lack of linux use in my eyes are invalid. There are other os'es that do everything they say is needed. Yet they are realatively unused and passed over.

The only negatives I can see to using MacOS on a corp. desktop would be cost of Apple hardware. But cost isn't something these businesses aren't concerned with. MacOS may not be a rock of stability, but is Win9x?

So what is the real reason that linux isn't on the business desktop? Or better yet, why hasn't MacOS been able to get to this market? And as a follow-up.....if linux gets to where the MacOS is in number of aps, ease of use, etc., will it even matter?

Do I understand this correctly?

[TheDullBlade]

So the thing is acting a little like a LASER, only without a net amplification of the signal, sucking back the energy it gives to the output pulse from the input pulse.

Rather than actually somehow weirdly having precognition of the coming wave, the medium amplifies the leading edge of the pulse with its own energy, creating energy "holes" where it was taken, which collapse in reverse-order and suck away the energy of the rest of the incoming pulse, with the appearance of a backwards wave motion. The interaction of the pulse, the amplification, and the energy holes creates a pulse that very closely matches the shape of the center of the pulse nearer to the leading edge of the pulse, but the leading edge of the pulse isn't transmitted any faster than the speed of light, and the output pulse is different from the input pulse in that its leading edge is closer back to the highest point of the pulse, so it lacks the precursor that would allow the bulk of the output signal to be shifted forward as far second time, so the apparent FTL speed (to a device which can only detect the peak of the pulse) should drop off the longer the "wire" is.

The backward energy-sink "wave" is not truly a chain-of-events wave at all, like sound, but is merely a sequence of disconnected events that occur in wave-like fashion WRT their positions and timing, and is therefore not bounded by the speed of light (just as the area illuminated by a flashlight, or the point at which the blades of a closing pair of scissors meet, can theoretically be moved faster than the speed of light).

That's pretty funky. I can definitely see uses for it, if that's what it does.

---
Despite rumors to the contrary, I am not a turnip.

Thats odd...

[Andrew Meier]

I run GNU/Linux+KDE on a 300Mhz AMD system with 128 MB RAM and an old ATI Rage Pro graphics card (PCI) with a 6 GB HD. I run Apache, IBM WebSphere (on a different port), a couple of Netscapes, and I always have at least 5 kedit windows, soundtracker, and a few terminals open. My system flies compaired to my old Windows setup not to mention the huge gain in stability (and six desktops to fill up with programming goodness). In windows, if I had Netscape open, an edit window open, winamp playing, and tried to compile a Java app my computer would reboot itself (which took quite a long time). My system has never crashed while running Linux. In fact, the only time I turn my computer off is when I install nifty new hardware.

Seeing as how you have about twice the machine I do, your computer should have absolutely rocked under Linux. I think if it was slow you must have had a video driver problem as it is fairly easy to pick an unaccelerated video driver.

On the RAM issue, why are you complaining about 217 MB being reported as used when you also say you know about caching -- it's not as if that RAM is locked up -- Linux will give the RAM back when an app needs it.