Provide a stable (across kernel versions) API for binary drivers (Is compatibility with the Windows driver API possible?), BUT.....
---Ensure those drivers do not run in Kernel mode---
Reasons: (1) You must protect the stability of the overall kernel (2) We really need all those drivers for oodles of old and new hardware.. (3) Hardware manufacturers will find a great deal of competitive advantage in providing source drivers.....hopefully enough to outdo any perceived competitive advantage in keeping them proprietary.
My philosophy used to be to use a system with limited resources--15" monitor, 256MB memory, low bandwidth, etc. so I not only know the software will run well for older systems, but also on systems running other things simultaneously and then exceptionally well on higher end systems.
But then I got a job where they forced my to use a big 23" monitor, two G5 processors, and 4gigs of memory... It's hard to turn back.. I find myself much more productive.. So I decided to do my basic development on the high end system and periodically test on another low end system.. A virtual machine might also be a good idea.
These are the productivity advantages:
Big Screen--It's easy to switch between resources such as code documentation, code windows, and a running version, etc.
Big Memory & Fast CPU--Compile times are dramatically faster.
But I also found it true that I find myself writing code that consumes more resources and runs slower on low end systems. Try hard to write for no more than 800x600 displays with 16-bit color. Ensure performance is snappy by timing you code and reducing it purportionally to consider how snappy it would be on a lower end system... And watch how much RAM it is using. I try ensure that files over a certain size are always loaded in parts, not the whole.
Also.. Eclipse is owesome... KDevelop is also very rich, but it just doesn't have the nice easy to use feel that Eclipse has. I have tried many times to get comfortable with KDevelop and then tried Eclipse and was comfortable with it at once.
The uses for semantics, plugins, and massively superior performance are all very compelling. Yes, some of the world needs to be redesigned around it--but some of these redesigns are long past due, anyway.
Breaking backward compatibility--if necessary--is worthwhile and certainly not unprecidented in the kernel (Remember a.out, remember the big conversion from libc to glibc). What it unnerves is some people's warm feelings about Ext3, regardless of technical merit. It's largely, I think, those same people who claim Reiser 3.6 is unstable.... Funny how, on my systems over the years, that's only been the case on Red Hat--not even on Mandrake which is based on Red Hat.
While I might agree that U.S. Soldiers are trigger happy, I think the guy killed in this case might have been a legitimate military target--if indeed, he was paying ransomes to get hostages.
And he was, in this case, guilty of sponsoring the murder of countless others people... mostly Iraqis. This direct assistance counts are participation making him a legitimate target under the Geneva conventions--I have truelly read them on the Law of War. Although, I believe they could have and therefore should have just arrested him.
The journalists comments also lead me to suspect she was complicit with the insurgents.
As I understand, it was openly admitted that they paid a ransome for one of the Italian hostages previously released.
Korea was occupied with one Japanes army in the North and antoher in the South. The Northern general surrendered to the Russians and the Southern genreal surrendered to the United States. The Kurril islands of Northern Japanese were taken by force by the Russians and remains occupied by Russia today.
The DMZ is definitely civilain free, except for a few small areas where a special class of dual-citizens live and farm. I'd really be nervous to live there... Clashes between heavy machine guns often flare up betweent he two sides, all along the DMZ.
I am actually currently reading his book--started about a month ago and am finishing the last of it now (a little every night before bed, when I'm not too tired).
His approach is surprising similar to my own (which I was initially happy to see), but less developed in some important ways. His book sometimes makes reference to being the first to consider this or that--nothing of which was new to me... things I've ready and/or talked about many times with others.
His approach also has a few critical flaws..
Foremost, invariance (the ability to recognize something regardless of where it is seen) cannot be achieved the way he speculates. I've testing this idea (and numerous others) in software years ago.
He illustrates this in the vision cortices where, he suggests, small sub-regions of the brain each learn to recognize something separately but criss-cross to other areas so that recognition can be invariant. I feel stupid admitting that I actually attempted this approach once...but not so alone now that Hawkins is advocating it.
First, each low-level (first to image) sub-region may break between another across the visual field at points within the object--what is going to target them into the fields? This problem can be satisfied farthar up the tree by cross-mixing between regions (and/or layers), but it's not very efficient.
Secondly and the critical point, this criss-cross betweens sub-regions method does not solve, but only moves the problem to a different space. Both the invariant identification and the location of identification are crucial factors to remember. But with the criss-cross method, there will be oodles and oodles of entities representing the same object of which higher level processes will need to somehow discover that they are the same thing......every time it's seen in a different place....
Another major problem is as to how this criss-crossing developes..given universal behavior for all neurons.
They need to explain exactly what they did to come to this determination. As I read it, they compared default setups... which avoids the "security is a process, not a product" debate.
However, it sounds like they compared the number of reported vulnerabilities as if they were apples and apples--which is a big error. Open Source should yield discovery of more vulnerabilities--the more, the better it's working.
On the other hand, if critical vulnerabilities are not being patched as quickly as for Windows then that would be a problem. What are the statistics on that?
Recently, claims by Bill Gates and other high Microsoft officials have claimed that Windows is better integrated and provides better inter-operability. What does Microsoft base this claim on, as the UNIX architecture (and the GNU/Linux system) and philosophies are heavily grounded in those very concepts--even the KDE desktop system provides full scriptability and concepts such as reflection?
I briefly met him at Comdex Las Vegas 2003, where he lead a round table discussion over web services.
He claims J2EE,.Net, and custom solutions are the three predominant tool groups used for providing web services.
He's unwilling to accept the and FOSS or GNU Tools have any uses in web services.
He's very detached from reality in the tech world. I think he just gets along with a certain circle of CIOs in the industry... I don't trust his judgement.....
Didn't the Starwars story begin as a dream of something that happened long ago? Maybe this was a vision. Perhaps The Force is real.
Perhaps this is the Death Star after a billion years, covered with cosmic debris....dust, rocks..
And perhaps, this was part of the war ware 1/3rd of the Angels rebelled against heaven, as per biblical accounts... Separating good Angel's from the fallen ones (Daemons), from which we get UNIX. You never really know..
The idea of a database filesystem is, of course, not novell at all. Implementations have existed for years on the command line, include a mysql mounter..
Here's my idea, as I've been telling people for years (and for which I've been awaiting the arrival of Reiser4):
The darn thing needs to start with a filesystem that supports extended attributes and very rapid name/metadata reading. Then, we need to add or extend commands such as the "ls" command to take advantage of SQL querying of filenames.
Next, build a GUI kpart for making queries and the ability to drag and drop a query as an icon on the desktop (stored view).
Imagine a GUI interface organized into rows and columns where the first row
(1) holds checkboxes for (show/don't show) the results. (2) The next row holds attribute names in dropdown boxes so you can pick what attribute names are shown (or not shown) from left to right...such as name, creation date, project, and document type. (3) The third row holds dropdown boxes for sorting which the options: Ascending, Descending, or None. (4) The fourth row are where-clause text entry boxes. For example, one might put "> 06/25/04 and 07/25/04" under the creation date attribute. (5) And all following rows are basic "Or" statement lines...show anything that matches the criteria on this line or any other line.
This mechanism has been referred to as a QBE (Query By Example) and it translates easily into a SQL statement. SQL statements can be parsed and a list of relevent files quickly produced.
One thing I hadn't thought of was also putting this mechanism into the File Open dialog.....but I guess that's a natural....I just didn't try to think much about it....good idea.
After a few initial glitches at my CyberCafe, LTSP-based thin clients ran flawlessly thereafter. Our main troubles were in printers jamming. Although we mainly ran KDE/Linux systems, even Windows Terminal Server ran more reliably (in a GNU/Linux-protected network using rdesktop on the clients).
My advice (inclusive of some flamebait) is the following:
*. First, if you need/want help contact the WSU Lug or me (smutz) on the #wsulug irc channel on freenode.net
1. Use LTSP (add a separate Windows Terminal Server and rdesktop, if you need Windows)
2. Gentoo, SuSE and Mandrake seemed to work best for various reasons. Gentoo is the very best, but takes a lot more work to get configured.
3. Use ReiserFS (but not on RedHat). Never mind all the anti-reiser FUD. I've been using Reiser for years on sometimes as many as 30 servers, six in one area with power outages at least once every two weeks. Reiser really is badly broken on RedHat, but has honestly been vastly more reliable than Ext3. I am running mostly Reiser but Ext3 on a few systems and the Ext3 systems are periodically corrupted after power outages or cable kicks...sometimes irrecoverably. We've repeatedly unplugged our Reiser-based systems and never had any corruption, except for a physical disk error, a bad disk controller, and an overheated system (due to a dead fan).
4. Do not standardize on Mozilla!! It is by a huge margin, the number one crashing and account-disabling application we've used in the Cafe. The latest versions of Konqueror can replace it very handily if you put a lot of work into configuration: installing all the Netscape pluggins and setting it to say it's Internet Explorer (latest version). On the other hand, FireFox (light version of Mozilla) is reasonably stable and works great without much work into it. Konqueror has the advantage that, when it does crash, it doesn't lock up the whole user account, as does Mozilla or Firefox. Konqueror just closes as where Mozilla-based browsers (like FireFox require superuser intervention to kill it and let the user keep working) The latest versions of Konqueror have pretty much done away with the last rendering problems and stability is pretty good. Remember: Even Mozilla only locks up one user account, and doesn't effect other users. With LTSP, you can just hit reset and login as a different user.. 5. If you are going to let people do word processing, set OpenOffice to automatically save as Microsoft Word format. It'll save you and your users TONS of headaches...because they never remember, if you tell them... And get rid of KOffice.. As much as I like it, people really do need MS Office compatibility and it doesn't reasonably offer that, yet. And, make sure you install Microsoft Fonts and/or set the default font to something Microsoft Word has that is similar.. I forget what we are using...sorry.
I'd love to offer more help but don't want to post my contact info in an open forum. You can find me and others who know of me on the wsulug IRC channel on freenode.net
Privacy, in my opinion is a generally bad idea. I feel society would be better if it were fully open.
Would we be more understanding and trusting of each other if we all had nothing to hide? If we all could see the lives of others?
Would there be terrorism if terrorists couldn't hide? Could we trust our governments if we knew everything they were saying and doing?
Privacy creates suspicion and mistrust.. It's a cause of wars and fighting of all kinds. It's what hinders us from finding and thwarting criminals--and from understanding them...and knowing why they do what they do.
I wish we all lives in glass houses with speakers that echoed everything we said to the outside. I wish nobody wore clothes... and we all knew eachother for who we really were.
So it *will have* a slow, non-integrated journalled filesystem more complete than NTFS. NTFS is arguably on the very edge of being a *journalled* filesystem at all.
Steve Jobs is another beast, like Bill Gates. Apple gives back just enough to keep OSS advocates from rebelling, but reserves the right to take it all back with BSD-style licensing and a tight grip on its intellectual property.
Their threats of law suites and such over Aqua like themes has really pissed me off. He's the piper and you who support him are his rats.
Open Source developers innovate in hundreds of little ways but not often in major ways. What I mean is, create a framework.
If you can do the high level design very well and document it just as clearly, then it can be useful and effective to garner a team of other interested OSS developers. Once a minimally functional application is built to wow people on a point or two, others may very well take interest. When they do, you have to have available componants of the system to immediately delegate to them. These componants must be easy to understand--such as, "it inputs this and must output that." If you've engineered the framework to be modular, then others might be able to understand how to contribute prior to loosing interest because they're lost in your code.
It's a shame that Ransome Love is being equated with UnitedLinux. It's a great concept but the mere fact that Caldera is part of it and is speaking for it automatically makes for a great deal of skepticism.
I disagree a lot with Caldera, but I think UnitedLinux is a good concept--really a necessary one. SuSE is also a big part of it and they're a great company. I am not impressed with Turbo Linux as a company, but their not as bad as Caldera... Connectiva? I don't know...
A United Desktop makes even more sense than a United server platform. These companies are simply not interested, so they should let someone else do it.
They have only expressed interest in a desktop version for developers--not home users or even business desktops. Caldera has, however, focused their other products on application servers.
That is, to address thin-client use as business desktops.
UnitedLinux is a very logical move that should have been done a loooong time ago.
Linux in the name is good because Linux continues to grow in market share even right through the toughest of times.. And predictions of mass extinction from Microsoft and others..
Linux will continue...faster and fuller.. The name will likewise grow in reverence..
Caldera was the first distrobution of consequence to have a graphical installer. Caldera also had the first graphical installer of any decent quality. That installer is maintained and available from Troll Tech under the QPL license.
Caldera and Troll Tech worked together in order to develop it.
Inspite of all the issues with Love, he is essentially correct. And he did good on this one...
Unfortunately, I think LUGs have a general unwillingness to mobilize in meaningful ways.
If LUGs offered formal training in GNOME, KDE, and OpenOffice--then how much of that switching over cost remains? Will we then effectively commoditize Linux as an alternative?
I think that when it comes time to renew software licenses with Bill (appropriately named), then certainly, Linux/OpenOffice is more of a commodity.
Matthew
Solution: Distrobution-Maker
on
Is RPM Doomed?
·
· Score: 1
By building a distrobution-maker we can achieve what UnitedLinux might have achieved if it were made for desktop, consumer-based distrobutions.
Idea: Use Debian to build a generic Linux base and have the distrobution-maker utility allow users to add applications, themes, and reconfiguration scripts to build their own distrobutions out of it. Give the generic base distrobution a free to all developer's list like Mandrake's Cooker and stay FAR from any mention of per-seat licensing. And make absolutely sure of LSB compliance.
Then an army of new distrobutions will arise that are all very compatible with each other. While the big server markets are saturated with the big Linux distros, these will most likely focus in niche areas and the desktop markets.
Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSE, et al. will not have to listen to users--it's a game of the survival of the fittest. The greater diversity the greater the chances of a newer, stronger rival who will get it right and make us all happy.
I would really like to do this. Maybe someday, if I find other *CAPABLE* volunteers, then we will.
Both Apple and Microsoft have used BSD-type licensed code to build large segments of their latest patent laden OSes.
But Apple has been even more aggressive at enforcing rediculous patents such as look & feel patents (the Aqua theme, for example). Furthermore, Apple's desktop is not any more user-friendly and offers less flexibility for users. I learned the Linux desktop for the first time much faster than my iMac.. I really am dissappointed by their OS and their company policies--but I do like the hardware..
Slashdot Mirror
Honestly--check my blogg on it at: http://intellygentz.blogspot.com/
I have been working on a paper for publication little by little for a long while now. Most recently, I am calling it "The Homeostatic Homunculus".
Really, it's a modal for the fundamentals of mammalian brain function.
Matthew C. Tedder
Provide a stable (across kernel versions) API for binary drivers (Is compatibility with the Windows driver API possible?), BUT.....
---Ensure those drivers do not run in Kernel mode---
Reasons:
(1) You must protect the stability of the overall kernel
(2) We really need all those drivers for oodles of old and new hardware..
(3) Hardware manufacturers will find a great deal of competitive advantage in providing source drivers.....hopefully enough to outdo any perceived competitive advantage in keeping them proprietary.
Matthew C. Tedder
My philosophy used to be to use a system with limited resources--15" monitor, 256MB memory, low bandwidth, etc. so I not only know the software will run well for older systems, but also on systems running other things simultaneously and then exceptionally well on higher end systems.
But then I got a job where they forced my to use a big 23" monitor, two G5 processors, and 4gigs of memory... It's hard to turn back.. I find myself much more productive.. So I decided to do my basic development on the high end system and periodically test on another low end system.. A virtual machine might also be a good idea.
These are the productivity advantages:
Big Screen--It's easy to switch between resources such as code documentation, code windows, and a running version, etc.
Big Memory & Fast CPU--Compile times are dramatically faster.
But I also found it true that I find myself writing code that consumes more resources and runs slower on low end systems. Try hard to write for no more than 800x600 displays with 16-bit color. Ensure performance is snappy by timing you code and reducing it purportionally to consider how snappy it would be on a lower end system... And watch how much RAM it is using. I try ensure that files over a certain size are always loaded in parts, not the whole.
Also.. Eclipse is owesome... KDevelop is also very rich, but it just doesn't have the nice easy to use feel that Eclipse has. I have tried many times to get comfortable with KDevelop and then tried Eclipse and was comfortable with it at once.
Matthew C. Tedder
The uses for semantics, plugins, and massively superior performance are all very compelling. Yes, some of the world needs to be redesigned around it--but some of these redesigns are long past due, anyway.
Breaking backward compatibility--if necessary--is worthwhile and certainly not unprecidented in the kernel (Remember a.out, remember the big conversion from libc to glibc). What it unnerves is some people's warm feelings about Ext3, regardless of technical merit. It's largely, I think, those same people who claim Reiser 3.6 is unstable.... Funny how, on my systems over the years, that's only been the case on Red Hat--not even on Mandrake which is based on Red Hat.
Matthew C. Tedder
While I might agree that U.S. Soldiers are trigger happy, I think the guy killed in this case might have been a legitimate military target--if indeed, he was paying ransomes to get hostages.
And he was, in this case, guilty of sponsoring the murder of countless others people... mostly Iraqis. This direct assistance counts are participation making him a legitimate target under the Geneva conventions--I have truelly read them on the Law of War. Although, I believe they could have and therefore should have just arrested him.
The journalists comments also lead me to suspect she was complicit with the insurgents.
As I understand, it was openly admitted that they paid a ransome for one of the Italian hostages previously released.
Matthew
Korea was occupied with one Japanes army in the North and antoher in the South. The Northern general surrendered to the Russians and the Southern genreal surrendered to the United States. The Kurril islands of Northern Japanese were taken by force by the Russians and remains occupied by Russia today.
The DMZ is definitely civilain free, except for a few small areas where a special class of dual-citizens live and farm. I'd really be nervous to live there... Clashes between heavy machine guns often flare up betweent he two sides, all along the DMZ.
I am actually currently reading his book--started about a month ago and am finishing the last of it now (a little every night before bed, when I'm not too tired).
His approach is surprising similar to my own (which I was initially happy to see), but less developed in some important ways. His book sometimes makes reference to being the first to consider this or that--nothing of which was new to me... things I've ready and/or talked about many times with others.
His approach also has a few critical flaws..
Foremost, invariance (the ability to recognize something regardless of where it is seen) cannot be achieved the way he speculates. I've testing this idea (and numerous others) in software years ago.
He illustrates this in the vision cortices where, he suggests, small sub-regions of the brain each learn to recognize something separately but criss-cross to other areas so that recognition can be invariant. I feel stupid admitting that I actually attempted this approach once...but not so alone now that Hawkins is advocating it.
First, each low-level (first to image) sub-region may break between another across the visual field at points within the object--what is going to target them into the fields? This problem can be satisfied farthar up the tree by cross-mixing between regions (and/or layers), but it's not very efficient.
Secondly and the critical point, this criss-cross betweens sub-regions method does not solve, but only moves the problem to a different space. Both the invariant identification and the location of identification are crucial factors to remember. But with the criss-cross method, there will be oodles and oodles of entities representing the same object of which higher level processes will need to somehow discover that they are the same thing......every time it's seen in a different place....
Another major problem is as to how this criss-crossing developes..given universal behavior for all neurons.
Matthew C. Tedder
They need to explain exactly what they did to come to this determination. As I read it, they compared default setups... which avoids the "security is a process, not a product" debate.
However, it sounds like they compared the number of reported vulnerabilities as if they were apples and apples--which is a big error. Open Source should yield discovery of more vulnerabilities--the more, the better it's working.
On the other hand, if critical vulnerabilities are not being patched as quickly as for Windows then that would be a problem. What are the statistics on that?
Matthew
Recently, claims by Bill Gates and other high Microsoft officials have claimed that Windows is better integrated and provides better inter-operability. What does Microsoft base this claim on, as the UNIX architecture (and the GNU/Linux system) and philosophies are heavily grounded in those very concepts--even the KDE desktop system provides full scriptability and concepts such as reflection?
I briefly met him at Comdex Las Vegas 2003, where he lead a round table discussion over web services.
He claims J2EE,
He's unwilling to accept the and FOSS or GNU Tools have any uses in web services.
He's very detached from reality in the tech world. I think he just gets along with a certain circle of CIOs in the industry... I don't trust his judgement.....
Matthew
Didn't the Starwars story begin as a dream of something that happened long ago? Maybe this was a vision. Perhaps The Force is real.
Perhaps this is the Death Star after a billion years, covered with cosmic debris....dust, rocks..
And perhaps, this was part of the war ware 1/3rd of the Angels rebelled against heaven, as per biblical accounts... Separating good Angel's from the fallen ones (Daemons), from which we get UNIX. You never really know..
The idea of a database filesystem is, of course, not novell at all. Implementations have existed for years on the command line, include a mysql mounter..
Here's my idea, as I've been telling people for years (and for which I've been awaiting the arrival of Reiser4):
The darn thing needs to start with a filesystem that supports extended attributes and very rapid name/metadata reading. Then, we need to add or extend commands such as the "ls" command to take advantage of SQL querying of filenames.
Next, build a GUI kpart for making queries and the ability to drag and drop a query as an icon on the desktop (stored view).
Imagine a GUI interface organized into rows and columns where the first row
(1) holds checkboxes for (show/don't show) the results.
(2) The next row holds attribute names in dropdown boxes so you can pick what attribute names are shown (or not shown) from left to right...such as name, creation date, project, and document type.
(3) The third row holds dropdown boxes for sorting which the options: Ascending, Descending, or None.
(4) The fourth row are where-clause text entry boxes. For example, one might put "> 06/25/04 and 07/25/04" under the creation date attribute.
(5) And all following rows are basic "Or" statement lines...show anything that matches the criteria on this line or any other line.
This mechanism has been referred to as a QBE (Query By Example) and it translates easily into a SQL statement. SQL statements can be parsed and a list of relevent files quickly produced.
One thing I hadn't thought of was also putting this mechanism into the File Open dialog.....but I guess that's a natural....I just didn't try to think much about it....good idea.
Matthew C. Tedder
After a few initial glitches at my CyberCafe, LTSP-based thin clients ran flawlessly thereafter. Our main troubles were in printers jamming. Although we mainly ran KDE/Linux systems, even Windows Terminal Server ran more reliably (in a GNU/Linux-protected network using rdesktop on the clients).
My advice (inclusive of some flamebait) is the following:
*. First, if you need/want help contact the WSU Lug or me (smutz) on the #wsulug irc channel on freenode.net
1. Use LTSP (add a separate Windows Terminal Server and rdesktop, if you need Windows)
2. Gentoo, SuSE and Mandrake seemed to work best for various reasons. Gentoo is the very best, but takes a lot more work to get configured.
3. Use ReiserFS (but not on RedHat). Never mind all the anti-reiser FUD. I've been using Reiser for years on sometimes as many as 30 servers, six in one area with power outages at least once every two weeks. Reiser really is badly broken on RedHat, but has honestly been vastly more reliable than Ext3. I am running mostly Reiser but Ext3 on a few systems and the Ext3 systems are periodically corrupted after power outages or cable kicks...sometimes irrecoverably. We've repeatedly unplugged our Reiser-based systems and never had any corruption, except for a physical disk error, a bad disk controller, and an overheated system (due to a dead fan).
4. Do not standardize on Mozilla!! It is by a huge margin, the number one crashing and account-disabling application we've used in the Cafe. The latest versions of Konqueror can replace it very handily if you put a lot of work into configuration: installing all the Netscape pluggins and setting it to say it's Internet Explorer (latest version). On the other hand, FireFox (light version of Mozilla) is reasonably stable and works great without much work into it. Konqueror has the advantage that, when it does crash, it doesn't lock up the whole user account, as does Mozilla or Firefox. Konqueror just closes as where Mozilla-based browsers (like FireFox require superuser intervention to kill it and let the user keep working) The latest versions of Konqueror have pretty much done away with the last rendering problems and stability is pretty good. Remember: Even Mozilla only locks up one user account, and doesn't effect other users. With LTSP, you can just hit reset and login as a different user..
5. If you are going to let people do word processing, set OpenOffice to automatically save as Microsoft Word format. It'll save you and your users TONS of headaches...because they never remember, if you tell them... And get rid of KOffice.. As much as I like it, people really do need MS Office compatibility and it doesn't reasonably offer that, yet. And, make sure you install Microsoft Fonts and/or set the default font to something Microsoft Word has that is similar.. I forget what we are using...sorry.
I'd love to offer more help but don't want to post my contact info in an open forum. You can find me and others who know of me on the wsulug IRC channel on freenode.net
Matthew C. Tedder
Privacy, in my opinion is a generally bad idea. I feel society would be better if it were fully open.
Would we be more understanding and trusting of each other if we all had nothing to hide? If we all could see the lives of others?
Would there be terrorism if terrorists couldn't hide? Could we trust our governments if we knew everything they were saying and doing?
Privacy creates suspicion and mistrust.. It's a cause of wars and fighting of all kinds. It's what hinders us from finding and thwarting criminals--and from understanding them...and knowing why they do what they do.
I wish we all lives in glass houses with speakers that echoed everything we said to the outside. I wish nobody wore clothes... and we all knew eachother for who we really were.
Matthew C. Tedder
So it *will have* a slow, non-integrated journalled filesystem more complete than NTFS. NTFS is arguably on the very edge of being a *journalled* filesystem at all.
Steve Jobs is another beast, like Bill Gates. Apple gives back just enough to keep OSS advocates from rebelling, but reserves the right to take it all back with BSD-style licensing and a tight grip on its intellectual property.
Their threats of law suites and such over Aqua like themes has really pissed me off. He's the piper and you who support him are his rats.
Matthew
Open Source developers innovate in hundreds of little ways but not often in major ways. What I mean is, create a framework.
If you can do the high level design very well and document it just as clearly, then it can be useful and effective to garner a team of other interested OSS developers. Once a minimally functional application is built to wow people on a point or two, others may very well take interest. When they do, you have to have available componants of the system to immediately delegate to them. These componants must be easy to understand--such as, "it inputs this and must output that." If you've engineered the framework to be modular, then others might be able to understand how to contribute prior to loosing interest because they're lost in your code.
Matthew
It's a shame that Ransome Love is being equated
with UnitedLinux. It's a great concept but
the mere fact that Caldera is part of it and is
speaking for it automatically makes for a great
deal of skepticism.
I disagree a lot with Caldera, but I think
UnitedLinux is a good concept--really a necessary
one. SuSE is also a big part of it and they're a
great company. I am not impressed with Turbo
Linux as a company, but their not as bad as
Caldera... Connectiva? I don't know...
A United Desktop makes even more sense than
a United server platform. These companies
are simply not interested, so they should let
someone else do it.
They have only expressed interest in a desktop
version for developers--not home users or even
business desktops. Caldera has, however, focused
their other products on application servers.
That is, to address thin-client use as business
desktops.
Matthew
The GPL mandates that free software remain
free exactly so that companies like Microsoft
cannot hijack it the way they are doing with BSD.
Congradulations BSDer.. You've added more value
to Windows 2000 than any corporate acquisition
could have dreamed of.
Did all those developers do all that work just so
Microsoft could further its domination?
Besides, Linux pioneers.. BSD follows in almost
everything...
Matthew
UnitedLinux is a very logical move that should
have been done a loooong time ago.
Linux in the name is good because Linux
continues to grow in market share even right
through the toughest of times.. And predictions
of mass extinction from Microsoft and others..
Linux will continue...faster and fuller.. The
name will likewise grow in reverence..
Caldera was the first distrobution of consequence
to have a graphical installer. Caldera also had
the first graphical installer of any decent
quality. That installer is maintained and
available from Troll Tech under the QPL license.
Caldera and Troll Tech worked together in order
to develop it.
Inspite of all the issues with Love, he is
essentially correct. And he did good on this
one...
Unfortunately, I think LUGs have a general
unwillingness to mobilize in meaningful ways.
If LUGs offered formal training in GNOME, KDE,
and OpenOffice--then how much of that switching
over cost remains? Will we then effectively
commoditize Linux as an alternative?
I think that when it comes time to renew software
licenses with Bill (appropriately named),
then certainly, Linux/OpenOffice is more of a
commodity.
Matthew
By building a distrobution-maker we can achieve
what UnitedLinux might have achieved if it were
made for desktop, consumer-based distrobutions.
Idea: Use Debian to build a generic Linux base
and have the distrobution-maker utility allow
users to add applications, themes, and
reconfiguration scripts to build their own
distrobutions out of it. Give the generic base
distrobution a free to all developer's list like
Mandrake's Cooker and stay FAR from any mention
of per-seat licensing. And make absolutely
sure of LSB compliance.
Then an army of new distrobutions will arise
that are all very compatible with each other.
While the big server markets are saturated with
the big Linux distros, these will most likely
focus in niche areas and the desktop markets.
Mandrake, Red Hat, SuSE, et al. will not have to
listen to users--it's a game of the survival of
the fittest. The greater diversity the greater
the chances of a newer, stronger rival who
will get it right and make us all happy.
I would really like to do this. Maybe someday,
if I find other *CAPABLE* volunteers, then we
will.
Matthew
Though I do not always agree with RMS methods,
he's absolutely right about this.
And this is one of the dangers I, myself, was
concerned about with these vendors.
A business model is possible without per-seat licensing.
That is a sad mistake--it's what turned me off of ELX
Linux, too. ELX would otherwise have been a significant
step forward for desktop Linux.
--Matthew
Both Apple and Microsoft have used BSD-type licensed code to build large segments of their latest patent laden OSes.
But Apple has been even more aggressive at enforcing rediculous patents such as look & feel patents (the Aqua theme, for example). Furthermore, Apple's desktop is not any more user-friendly and offers less flexibility for users. I learned the Linux desktop for the first time much faster than my iMac.. I really am dissappointed by their OS and their company policies--but I do like the hardware..
--Matthew