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LWCE Bits and Pieces
Well, we've gotten a massive number of submissions with the haps at LWCE. I've distilled some of the good ones below: Chanc_Grokon wrote to us with the press release from Ximian about the monthly charges for Red Carpet, their
installer. He also raises the "Why not just use apt-get?" point. A number of people wrote pointing out LinuxLookup.com's Day 1 coverage and Day 2 coverage. Of particular interest to Daeslin was Larry Lessig's attack on overly strong intellectual property laws. A number of people,
Krismon included, have voiced some disappointment at the excitement of the show - not being there, I make no judgments. Sun has unveiled more details about StarOffice 6. Compaq's CTO also made comments about Linux improving in the enterprise. jrbw sent in Linus' thoughts (dismissive) of .Net/Hailstorm. And KDE has won the "Best Open Source Project" award. Newsforge has also got a round-up and coverage piece. More news as it happens.
"Chanc_Grokon wrote to us with the press release from Ximian about the monthly charges for Red Carpet, their installer. He also raises the "Why not just use apt-get?" point."
Ximian's charges for Red Carpet aren't mandatory. They give users who are willing to pay for it much better bandwidth. Don't want to pay? That's cool. You don't need to. Just use the free service, and you'll be fine!
> For software vendors, Ximian introduced the Red
> Carpet Partner Program, which allows software
> vendors to create and manage channels to
> distribute their Linux or UNIX software.
This program is on their site for a while.
I was interested in distributing my application
via it and filled the the application form few months ago and nobody ever responded to me. Nowbody even confirmed submission.
First, Ximian: The announcement says tose who subscribe will have "5-% faster downloads durring peak hours". This suggests that they will still ovver the service for free, with some diminished capacity, but the announcement doesn't really say.Can anyone confirm or clarify this?
Regarding Lessig's comments oc Copyright: I'd like to point out that James Madison was on Lessig's side regarding Copyright.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
There won't be a StarOffice, per se, but there is an OpenOffice port in the works, info at openoffice.org.
Unfortunately, the current port is very primitive (i.e. no printer support yet) and it doesn't appear that any work has been done since April. I wouldn't hold my breath.
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
This is a terrible analogy, and IMHO it is even worse for the point of open source. First off, comparing the creator of linux to the creator of the Word paper clip is a bit off. The significance of the development of a free OS and an animated piece of metal are totally different. Besides Linus, there are 1000s of people who do open source that don't get nor seek any recognition. For example, who is the guy who wrote the Gnome Calculator? Can you name the members of the Mozilla team?
More importantly though, this panelist (Dirk Hohndel, former CTO of SuSE) makes a very disconcerting assertion that if you get into open source, you are going to get tons of recognition from the endeavor. This is certainly not that case. I think that most of the benefits of open source come from collaboration between diverse groups, and the vast amounts of knowledge that can be gained just by *looking* at someone elses code. The idea that open source will get you a lot of recognition is ludicrous. True, people may say "X application is great!", but they will probably not know the person behind it or ever send a thank-you note. A lot of people say the same about commercial software.
Just a rant, but open source should never be about recognition--if it becomes about that, the movement will fade rather fast.
Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?
"Let's assume Microsoft could tax everything on the Internet," Torvalds said "You think the U.S. government would give up monopoly status as taxation man? The government would step in and say, 'No, no, that's what we do.'"
I hate to have to disagree with Linus, but I'm not so sure the government would step in. There is already an oligopoly that essentially taxes all transactions on the internet - the credit card companies. Practically all online transactions are made with credit cards and for each transaction made the credit card company collects a small percentage of the sale from the merchant. Why would the government treat Microsoft any differently? Well ok, they might if Microsoft uses its desktop monopoly to gain a network information clearinghouse monopoly (I say if because although Microsoft is certain to try this, it is not certain to succeed). My point is, I don't think the government would have a problem with a single company taxing all internet transactions at the information clearinghouse level as there already companies doing it at lower levels, with the caveat that this only applies to the point that the company seeking to do this works within the law (including anti-trust laws).
-----
Free P2P Backup, Windows & Linux
I think it's easy for us geeks to forget why such things as Red Carpet are needed.
;)
I will always argue that apt-get has to be one of the best linux app installers, but a huge part of apt-get is command-line oriented. Red Carpet, although using rpm's, is graphical and is much easier for a gui-oriented linux user to handle. I've used Red Carpet and I like what I see so far, it goes a long way of making linux newbie-friendly. (...and all you CLI die-hards, please just hush.
As long as they price it right, I think a service like Red Carpet would be worth the money, just for ease of use, point-n-click, user-friendliness of installing new software and updates -- something that will bring *nix further along, because right now, I see two things holding us back: a really kick-ass office suite (coming along nicely, really) and ease-of-use software installation.
I, for one, am willing to pay money for *good* software and services...
Hard as this may be to believe, not everyone uses Debian. If Linux is ever going to make inroads against MS, it's got to have pretty graphical frontends. Sure, apt-get is nice for the hardcore Linux fans, but Joe Average experimenting with Linux doesn't want to fool with the command line; he wants his point and click.
AJS
The FUD point is very clear here: what if, with a little bit of manipulation, it becomes difficult not to use Hailstorm/Passport/.NET for secure or sensitive transactions? What if Microsoft could secure trust in enough governments and major financial organisations to make a majority of Internet transactions use it? Of the current MS innovations I think it is the most dangerous, because it has the potential to concentrate a lot of responsibility in one private organisation. It really shouldn't be scorned just yet.
Congrats to KDE on the award.
I think its time to analyze why KDE manages to sustain such a high quality open source product. I dont have much knowledge of the modus-operandi of KDE developers, so I am not sure what contributing factors lead to such success.
Is it:
- A commitment to a good core design, and core API's. ie, solid foundation.
- A willingness to throw away a component that doesnt work to expectations (not matter how big or ingrained the components\ is). eg CORBA for inter process communication.- Perform more testing than other projects ?
- Some unique development process/philosophy ?
- Better desingers?
- Better coders ?
What makes KDE as good as it is ? Perhaps a KDE'r can shed some light that other projects would find helpful.
(Bah. If /. is going to mangle my submission, at least spell my name right).
.NET and Hailstorm. In this thing I wrote I show some recent examples of Microsoft moving the goal posts when things didn't go their way.
I think Linus is way off the mark by not being concerned by
This earlier thing is along similar lines. It talks about concerns raised by Bruce Perens that Microsoft is currently building of warchest of software patents to start hassling open source projects once the heat has cooled down from the Justice Department.
Just thinking about it now, has Microsoft ever passed on an opportunity to screw money out of people? (Having said that, good for them. They are a business after all. Doesn't mean we as users of technology have to support them in that though).
...j
Early start, strong core team and large user base for testing, blind luck. Not necessarily in that order.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
The way I see it competition is always good. Don't knock it if you haven't tried it.
The main issues with the
Hailstorm
The main idea behind Hailstorm is a good one and the devil is in the details. I actually would pay money if I could be guaranteed a safe, central repository of all my user information currently floating around on the web especially for two reasons.
- A while ago CD Now announced that they may be going out of business. This filled me with dread because they had my credit card info which would probably have been sold along with my CD listening preferences to the highest bidder as part of the liquidation process. At that time I would have loved it if there was some central place where CD Now got my credit card info from that I could just tell, "Hey, no longer share my credit card info with CD Now."
- Also after the above incident I stopped shopping at CD Now and started shopping at Amazon. This meant that all the music preferences I had built up from rating over a hundred CDs at CDNow were lost and the only way to rebuild that relationship with Amazon would be to rate X amount of music or hope Amazon could do similar things with less info (which they have surprisingly enough). Again, some central repository which I could tell,"Stop sharing my music preferences with CD Now and share them with Amazon" would have been ideal.
The way I see it, the Hailstorm idea has merit. The problems I see are- Guaranteeing security and reliability will be a bitch and a half.
- Websites may resist adopting it since customer info is the one valuable thing they have.
- Without motivation (i.e. marketing blitz) and an easy way to sign up, consumers won't flock to it.
- Entrusting all that information to a single entity would make some peole nervous.
All of the above problems can be tackled one way or the other either socially or technologically. Secondly, I think the time foir this kind of technology has come, whether it will be Microsoft's Hailstorm, the product of some competitor or an Open Source alternative is all that remains to be seen.DISCLAIMER: I'm an ex-Microsoft emploee (former intern).
...I'd be more interested in them keeping their packages current than giving me a fatter download pipe. Mozilla is still at 0.9.1 in Red Carpet; I chatted with some team members and they advised against maually installing 0.9.3 over the Red Carpet install because it would break things, and 0.9.3 isn't on the current radar for packaging according to the folks I taked to..
For minor updates, that's not such a big deal, but Moz users know that 0.9.3 is a quantum leap ahead of anything before it in terms of usability and stability, and it's a pretty huge piece of software in the desktop Linux world. I'm stuck at 0.9.1 until they put a package together. I know the guys are busy and doing it for nothing (so far), but take my money and pay someone to keep the packages as current as possible, please, if you want to take it.
-- http://frobnosticate.com
Ciao
----
FB
I hope that people actually take time to read Ximian's press releases before passing judgement. But that is probably asking too much. Ximian is offering (in 45 days) two new Red Carpet-based services, ON TOP OF the current *free* Red Carpet updating service they provide as a gift to the community. First is Red Carpet Express, which is basically guaranteed fast access to software updates. A lot of people (including myself) requested something like this. I am happy that they are offering it. The second service is especially cool. The CorporateConnect idea is great. Basically, companies can tailor exactly what software (and in what channels) is offered, and which users can access that software. And it can push updates automatically in the corporate LAN. That is an incredibly useful tool. Ximian is being smart, and focusing on the Corporate desktop (and those customers) rather than end-users. Creating tools and services like these that really add value to a company's IT infrastructure is what is going to make Ximian succeed. End-user oriented business models can come later. Ximian is going to continue to create great software, and develop really useful services that are worth the money.
Entrusting your info to someone else is inherently dangerous. The more appropriate answer is to spec-out a data-interchange API, and using is write programs that allow locally stored data to be exchanged with sites on the web. Under your control. Back up of encrypted files to a remote site is, of course, desireable, but that should also be under your control.
Note that if this is done with a local program, you would still depend on backups to get through system crashes. But if you are using HailStorm then either the security is weak, or a single corrupt file could deny you access to the data. (It must be dependant on a key file.) And you are laying yourself open to arbitrary increases in price.
The functionality that you are asking for is worthwhile. The solution should not be a centralized repository.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
"Entrusting your info to someone else is inherently dangerous. "
Do you live in a cave with your money under a mattress?
I'm just wondering how you get by in life without services such as telephone, banking, etc. You must never do any shopping on the internet either.
Why do you care?
And this isn't just *any* "private organization", either. Let's not lose sight of who we're talking about here.
The big question with .Net is how widely it is adopted by online merchants. Currently, Visa/MasterCard/Discover/AmEx take a few percent of each transaction as a fee, which is how they make their money (well, that and charging huge interest rates and outrageous late fees, but I digress...). If I were Billy and his minions, I'd undercut the CC companies (ever wonder why AmEx is "less accepted" than Visa/MC? They charge a higher percentage of each sale, which is paid by the merchant.), and give the merchant an even *better* deal if they agreed to *only* accept transactions using Passport.
MS can afford it as a loss leader - they're rich. It's the same old story out of Redmond - essentially give away a product to develop a huge market penetration, then once you've eliminated the competition, raise prices out the ying-yang.
Microsoft's implementation of the Passport service is a conflict of interest. Microsoft sells the desktop Operating System, which will use HailStorm/.Net/Passport. They sell the Server Operating System, which will have proprietary plugs to integrate the Passport system with MS Transaction Server. They charge the customer for the ability to access the server. They charge the server people for access to their database. They also close out alternative online-transaction options.
Let's say you go to GiganticBookstore.com, and in order to buy book X (which you already have listed on your screen), you can either click the "Pay with Passport!" icon, or go through the 5-minute process of creating a user account, putting in your credit card info, your anti-spam-mail preferences, and then finally buy that one book. The convenience is going to lead a lot of online stores to eventually offer access only via Passport, to simplify management of the transaction server.
This convenience isn't simply a market need - it's being forced into the market by the (monopoly) marketholder, as a way to ensure that people will be forced to use their transaction-related products in the future. I see this behavior, regardless of if Passport is free to the end user, as incredibly dangerous and a complete conflict of interest.
MS is putting their hands in everyone's cookie jar at once. You know it won't be long until HailStorm also integrates a PayPal-clone and kills competition there... and then integrates an iBill-clone and puts THEM out of business too. And best of all, if you're not running IE 6.x on Windows XP with your "Automatic Update Notification" turned on, you won't be able to buy things from internet stores with your own real, legal money. Mozilla running on Linux? Why would Microsoft even begin to care about its market share when they control the transaction server OS, the online credit and banking interfaces, and the customer account info for something like 20% of the United States? Market share of a product they've successfully pushed out of the online transaction realm will be of no concern.
.... um, i lost you after "0110100001101001".
Your CC info is less secure with Hailstorm than is is with anybody else. And in fact gives MS direct access to your purchasing infomation because they are directly invloved with the purchase. Much like a a travel agent has access to you itenary when you book a flight.
How many people do you want to have on demand access to your records?
Guaranteeing security and reliability will be a bitch and a half.
Rember MS doesn't even guarentee their software.
Websites may resist adopting it since customer info is the one valuable thing they have.
Websites have products to sell. Customer info simply allows them to gain info to sell products.
Without motivation (i.e. marketing blitz) and an easy way to sign up, consumers won't flock to it.
Of course it's going to be easy to sign up. How easy is it going to be to cancel?
Entrusting all that information to a single entity would make some peole nervous.
It should.
Next thing you know MS is gonna start having Hailstorm exclusivity contracts where realtors can't do business with non-hailstorm customers. Then they can try to force the non-hailstorm realtors out of the market.
This kind of technology is Big Brother at it's best. The idea of not having to type CC and universal preferences it nice, but this is a Big Brother and should be illegal.
If someone is passing you on the right, you are an asshole for driving in the wrong lane.
And for those who haven't used apt-get before, let me fill you in on some key points:
I really don't see how anything can be more user-friendly than apt-get.
Please. Unless you're purporting a huge consipiracy theory, could you explain to me how our government would trust Microsoft to create a secure environment? Keep in mind that it was our government's web site that was recently targeted by a worm that fed off of a security breach in a MS product.
And correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't it Windows NT4 that was not approved by use in our government's military because it was not secure enough?
Hailstorm and .NET may be just peachy, but don't count on our government to give it some sort of stamp of approval. Not for a long, long time.
By the way, I've been an MCSE for two years and typically enjoy MS products. These crazy theories just drive me nuts.
--SC
You read fiction? I write it! Lemme know what you th
Next thing you know MS is gonna start having Hailstorm exclusivity contracts where realtors can't do business with non-hailstorm customers. Then they can try to force the non-hailstorm realtors out of the market.
And that's the fear associated with Hailstorm - that they'll impose a "tax" on internet usage. Even if it's indirect (ie, passed on to the web site you're trying to access via your Passport account), do you really want Microsoft squeezing money out of you at every turn.
And Microsoft's recent track record of abrupt about-turns isn't great (AOL and XP, for example).
As i've said elsewhere, good for Microsoft from trying to make money whereever they can - it doesn't mean I have to be part of it, though.
There's also the worrying theory put forward by certain people that MS is waiting for the right turn to screw open source projects based on possible patent infrigements.
Do you trust them to not try to screw competing technologies over as soon as it is safe for them to do so?
...j
Bill Gates' wife was responsible for the paper clip. Really, it's true. Melinda French Gates was a project lead on MS Bob (you have to remember MicroSoft Bob -- it was that cartoony software that slowed your machine to a crawl and insulted you while balancing your checkbook or reading email). When Bob was revealed to be the complete and utter turkey that it was always destined to be, guess what got some of the "usability and human interface" stuff? Office. Guess who happened to also be, ah, "seeing" The Boss? Melinda. Why wasn't Bob just canned, like any other project that wastes millions and failed completely? You have to wonder if Bill G wasn't getting pillow-talked into something. In fact, MS Bob was the first consumer product Bill Gates released personally. People do the strangest things for love.
Anyway, a lot of what Bob had to offer didn't get canned (as it should have). It got repuposed and wound up in other MS products. Take a look at the screenshot on this page. See that dog in the lower corner? That was Bob's dog Rex. (I wish they had a picture of the dragon named "Java"; I wonder if McNealy every knew about that?) Looks like that paper clip, eh? Bob's ghost is in other stuff, too. MS Agent had a re-incarnation.
Well this is all way OT. But I think the Bob fiasco sheds some light on what goes on at MS. There's really no reason to wonder about the pape clip. I'm sure Melinda will insist on touchy-feely stuff being included in every MS product. I love it when someone thinks for me...
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Hailstorm is going to end up being nothing more than one central point of failure for all of e-commerce. Wide scale adoption of Hailstorm will lead to a wonderfully tender Achilles Heel for e-commerce.
I will put money on the fact that some hacker or group of hackers will crack Hailstorm wide open, if it ever gains enough of a following. Do we really want to allow a 14 year old script-kiddie to make the NASDAQ drop 20% in one day because all of e-commerce was fuxored and put out of commission for at least the next few business days?
Don't throw away diversity!
Unfortunately, the press release about Red Carpet Express and Red Carpet Corporate Connect erroneously left an important bit of information. Red Carpet will remain free. Red Carpet Express is an optional service which gives you guaranteed access to the latest updates, even if the main public Red Carpet server is congested. Red Carpet Corporate Connect offers additional features to corporate workgroup users.
The conspiracy theorists will no doubt continue to accuse us of "selling out" at every step of the way; I'm too busy working on adding additional features to Red Carpet to get upset at this point. I hope that anyone with questions regarding Red Carpet or other Ximian products/services will at least contact Ximian directly.
exactly. it'll be free initially to get people on board. sooner or later MS will want to make money back on it, to at least cover the no doubt inconsiderable cost of runner a service on this (perceived) scale.
anyone know what AOLs impression of Hailstorm is? they really can't be happy about it...
This is a conflict of interest. Microsoft sells the desktop Operating System, which will use HailStorm/.Net/Passport. They sell the Server Operating System, which will have proprietary plugs to integrate the Passport system with MS Transaction Server. They charge the customer for the ability to access the server. They charge the server people for access to their database. They also close out alternative options. Let's say you go to GiganticBookstore.com, and in order to buy book X (which you already have listed on your screen), you can either click the "Pay with Passport!" icon, or go through the 5-minute process of creating a user account, putting in your credit card info, your anti-spam-mail preferences, and then finally buy that one book. The convenience is going to lead a lot of online stores to eventually offer access only via Passport, for their own convenience. This convenience isn't simply a market need - it's being forced into the market by the marketholder, as a way to ensure that people will be forced to use their products in the future. I see this behavior, whether Passport is free or not to the end user, as incredibly dangerous and a complete conflict of interest. MS is putting their hands in everyone's cookie jar at once. You know it won't be long until HailStorm also integrates a PayPal-clone and kills competition there... and then integrates an iBill-clone and puts THEM out of business too. And best of all, if you're not running IE 6.x on Windows XP with your "Automatic Update Notification" turned on, you won't be able to buy things from internet stores with your own real, legal money. Mozilla running on Linux? Why would Microsoft even begin to care about its market share when they control the transaction server OS, the online credit and banking interfaces, and the customer acconut info for something like 20% of the United States? Market share of a product they've successfully pushed out of the online transaction realm will be of no concern.
http://saveie6.com/
I was really disappointed with this year's show. I didn't think it had the same energy as last year's show in San Jose. I think the number of exhibitors have gone down. I'm sure the economy has something to do with it, probably half the companies that were there last year have gone under. I thought the general mood was: eh.. we're here.. let's TRY to sell something.. whereas last year was: Hey! I've got something new and innovative, this is something you can't live without. There was also a lot more anticipation last year I think, there was the release of Helix(now Ximian) and OSDN, 2.4 kernel, and the economy and the technology outlook was much better. SGI was noticably absent, they had one of the biggest areas last year. There just wasn't the noise and excitement this year.
Am I the only one who really misses the old ".org Pavillion" they had a couple of years ago? It was a great place to just hang out and get to know people, or hack on your laptop if that's what you wanted to do. Now all the .orgs have their own booths. While I suppose it's nice of LWCE to provide them, it just doesn't make for the same atmosphere.
And the brethren went away edified.
I just find it interesting that you can't comprehend this and immediately assume that anyone saying good things about Microsoft must be in their employ.
If people are allowed to like the Amiga, OS/2 or Linux. Why can't people like Windows?
Personally what I find far more disturbing is the number of websites which store my credit card number after I complete a transaction... for my convenience.
This has been going on for years. Strangely nobody complains about it. Instead when Microsoft suggests a service which might provide a different alternative to these insecure solutions, a bunch of people start whining.
This anti-everything-MS attitude isn't very well founded in reality or technical knowhow. I find it disappointing and wonder why I should grant any value to such an opinion.