Do you think that this is open source? I'm interested in your opinions. Here's something that I just sent out...
Dear Netpliance,
I think it is great that you are embracing the open source community by announcing the Developers Corner. I am glad to see the Developer 100 Pilot Program announced, but I feel that it doesn't support an "open development" process that you describe.
The open source community works at solving problems by working together, collaborating with each other. People can pitch in and work on part of a project that interests them and/or is their area of expertise. People work together on projects, not because they are given incentive to do so (i.e. free I-openers), but because their project interests them.
The two main problems with the 100 Pilot Program is that...
1. It provides the wrong incentive for people to contribute to the open source movement. I've already talked to many friends who say that they will apply to the program just to receive a free I-opener. You can't expect many contributions from someone who are in it just for a free I-opener.
Instead you need to target the people who are actually interested in developing things. One way to do this would be to devote resources to webpages or discussion forums about specific areas of development. By doing so, Netpliance would also be able to focus the development that was going on. Hosting these webservices would probably be cheaper then giving away 100 I-openers, and the developers would do the work of creating the sites/BBS's/whatever as they were needed.
A good example of a company devoting resources to an open-source development is Netscape. Go to http://mozilla.org/ and see what they have done to rewrite the Netscape source code. Netscape 6.0 is a product of the Mozilla project; we will have to see for ourselves if it is a good thing or not. (B.T.W. Netscape 6.0 is much smaller then it's past versions. I smell an embeddable web browser!)
2. By limiting the number to 100 people and then making it difficult for others to work with their I-openers, you are severly hindering an open development process. There are already close to 100 websites on the internet about modifying the I-opener and the number of people working with these units is much greater.
I'm sure that you've already recieved over 100 emails from people asking to recieve an I-opener to turn it into something or other. Once these are given out this will prevent developers with potentially good ideas from being able to work on thier ideas.
As I have already said, a better solution would be to host discussion forums and support the development from the inside. This would better for Netpliance economically, allow Netpliance to dynamically control development, and probably give Netpliance a better relationship with it's open source developers.
Actually, silica (glass) and sapphire make much better fiberoptics then any polymers do. It is true that Organic materials are easier to process then glass, but they provide too much optical interference to be useful for longer then a few feet. A single glass optic cable can run for miles with little or no quality loss.
On optical chips, they are using tiny (<1um) cylinders made out of sapphire to bend light in a sharp 90 degree angles. This is part of what makes devices like this possible. In the past light had to be bent in long optic cables with a large radius, or be reflected. These cylinders, refract the light at 90 degrees and will hopefully make more "optic circuits" possible in the near future.
I'm Finishing up my Masters Degree in Ceramics Engineering
I don't agree with you that all material on the web should be publicly available.
A good example agains this is internal coporate information. Putting this on the web reaps the benefits of being easily available to the employees of the company, while not being public information.
As you pointed out, CGI, is a good way to do this. But like I said it isn't public information.
You have a good point. I kinda jumped the gun by implying that your security holes were bugs in the software.
I didn't think anyone else was implying that the only way to contribute to the open source movement was to write code. I certainly didn't say that.
As far as the user interfaces go, open source software tends to lag behind commercial code because it doesn't need to be sold. The GUI is what basically sells one company's program over a competitor's. 90% of the computing population only notice differences in the user interface between competing software. This is why gnome/enlightenment and KDE may be good for Linux in the long run.
Instead of adding memory-hogging features, guys, why don't you make mozilla the one browser that is secure from all types of attacks?
It sounds like someone needs to volunteer a little effort towards the Mozilla Project! That's a benefit of open source.
I think that most of the memory hogging features in Mozilla are pretty relevant and needed. For example, enabling MathML. I wish all the current webbrowsers were MathML enabled, but we have a long way to go.
Just because were all 'technical' slashdotters, doesn't mean that we are immune to internet porn!
Before you moderate me down, just think about the last time you checked out your own selection of porn sites/newsgroups!!! Wouldn't you pay $$$ to see internet porn quicktimes?
The QT player would be free anyway, so we don't have to pay.
This is awesome! I didn't think others were interested in this kind of stuff the same way that my friend and I are.
At my school we've found some crazy places, but our current challenge is on top of a tall smokestack. It's now unused, but taller then anything else on campus.
Here's a tip that's not in that article: Become good friends with the custodial staff. As a grad student, I bullsh&t with the custodians for my office all the time. They are really cool,...and... they're usually willing to open that locked door to the roof/steam-tunnel.
-Let's/. effect the steam-tunnels!!
Re:Only the paranoid survive...
on
Intel Roadmap
·
· Score: 1
I'll admit that the RDRAM might be a bad idea, but Intel's recent decisions regarding the IA-64 have been great.
I mainly like how they have worked closely with HP in order to develop a chip that meets both companies needs. This partnership will result in an awesome chip with revolutionary branch prediction technology. It's headed for the HP workstations and servers as soon as it comes out, and they will fly! This year's new HP servers/workstations have a special controller which can be removed and an IA-64 swapped in fot the current HP processor. Now, that's upgradeability!
Perhaps Intel should concentrate only on processors and not back dumb ideas. (Weren't they the ones who wanted to encrypt the signal to your monitor?)
p.s. I don't work for HP.;-)
-
Re:Just wait for the cardinal shortage
on
Netscape 6
·
· Score: 1
Since there seems to be a mathematical slant to that post, I'd like to mention that Netscape 6 WON'T have MathML implemented.
If you want to view MathML, you still need to download nightly builds of Mozilla from http://mozilla.org
Hopefully, we'll be able to display our wonderful equations on the web soon!!
On one hand I want to abide by copyright laws and not steal/pirate information that doesn't belong to me, but, on the other hand the large corporations (DVD, Music industry, etc.) are raping us and stealing our right to innovate, so that they can make money.
I guess that's capitalism. Anyone want to move to the Catskills backwoods with me?
Re:What I really want to know...
on
Rack An iMac
·
· Score: 1
If you read the article, he makes it clear why he needed to rack the iMac.
I think this modification is akin to putting a VW bug frame/interior/motor into a Dodge pick-up truck (but they both use a standard ATX battery!).
With Regards to pressuring them for a 'linux-ready,' 'easier to modify' model, this is there nice reply to a letter I sent them. I also asked for a copy of the QNX license, and the root password:
=-==-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Dear XXXXX
We appreciate your interest in our product and our company.
We understand that a group of individuals recently developed a way to run the Linux operating system on the i-opener by making modifications to the hardware and removing our software. The modifications allow these highly technical users to bypass the i-opener service network. These modifications are isolated to the i-openers purchased by those individuals and have no impact whatsoever on the Netpliance service network or its customers.
It's worth noting that the work-around these individuals developed does not provide them with free Internet service. While it has opened up a complex route to other Internet Service Providers, virtually all of our i-opener customers have no interest nor the technical skills in manipulating the complex inner workings of the device to achieve that goal. i-opener customers are looking for one thing: simple, inexpensive Internet access without a computer. As this is our primary audience, we do not provide documentation regarding the QNX operating system.
That said, the small community of users who developed this work-around actually offer a complement to the core technology behind the i-opener - that it's robust enough to run an operating system like Linux. Netpliance does not endorse the modification of the i-opener device to possibly support alternative operating systems or other uses. However, these developments have uncovered an additional opportunity that Netpliance had not been focusing on, but will now consider. We'll keep you updated as to how Netpliance plans to work with the growing community of Linux developers.
Regards,
Kristi Copeland Director - Sales and Support
Re:Interesting for adults, but...
on
Lego CAD
·
· Score: 1
Play-do CAD would cool too!
...except that it would require complex Finite Volume routines in order to determine plastic deformation and viscous flow. --fun but tough.
I bet that just sqeezing Pla-Do through the "star extruder" would tie up that new IBM Beowulf cluster for 2 days!!!;-)
"I always wondered about kids who build lego toys out of any color legos, mixing and matching colors, with no order or patterns. I'd hate to see the code that they program nowadays."
Slashdot Mirror
Do you think that this is open source? I'm interested in your opinions. Here's something that I just sent out...
Dear Netpliance,
I think it is great that you are embracing the open source community by
announcing the Developers Corner. I am glad to see the Developer 100
Pilot Program announced, but I feel that it doesn't support an "open
development" process that you describe.
The open source community works at solving problems by working together,
collaborating with each other. People can pitch in and work on part of a
project that interests them and/or is their area of expertise. People
work together on projects, not because they are given incentive to do so
(i.e. free I-openers), but because their project interests them.
The two main problems with the 100 Pilot Program is that...
1. It provides the wrong incentive for people to contribute to the open
source movement. I've already talked to many friends who say that they
will apply to the program just to receive a free I-opener. You can't
expect many contributions from someone who are in it just for a free
I-opener.
Instead you need to target the people who are actually interested in
developing things. One way to do this would be to devote resources to
webpages or discussion forums about specific areas of development. By
doing so, Netpliance would also be able to focus the development that
was going on. Hosting these webservices would probably be cheaper then
giving away 100 I-openers, and the developers would do the work of
creating the sites/BBS's/whatever as they were needed.
A good example of a company devoting resources to an open-source
development is Netscape. Go to http://mozilla.org/ and see what they
have done to rewrite the Netscape source code. Netscape 6.0 is a product
of the Mozilla project; we will have to see for ourselves if it is a
good thing or not. (B.T.W. Netscape 6.0 is much smaller then it's past
versions. I smell an embeddable web browser!)
2. By limiting the number to 100 people and then making it difficult for
others to work with their I-openers, you are severly hindering an open
development process. There are already close to 100 websites on the
internet about modifying the I-opener and the number of people working
with these units is much greater.
I'm sure that you've already recieved over 100 emails from people asking
to recieve an I-opener to turn it into something or other. Once these
are given out this will prevent developers with potentially good ideas
from being able to work on thier ideas.
As I have already said, a better solution would be to host discussion
forums and support the development from the inside. This would better
for Netpliance economically, allow Netpliance to dynamically control
development, and probably give Netpliance a better relationship with
it's open source developers.
Thank You,
Ben
Actually, silica (glass) and sapphire make much better fiberoptics then any polymers do. It is true that Organic materials are easier to process then glass, but they provide too much optical interference to be useful for longer then a few feet. A single glass optic cable can run for miles with little or no quality loss.
On optical chips, they are using tiny (<1um) cylinders made out of sapphire to bend light in a sharp 90 degree angles. This is part of what makes devices like this possible. In the past light had to be bent in long optic cables with a large radius, or be reflected. These cylinders, refract the light at 90 degrees and will hopefully make more "optic circuits" possible in the near future.
I'm Finishing up my Masters Degree in Ceramics Engineering
-
I don't agree with you that all material on the web should be publicly available.
A good example agains this is internal coporate information. Putting this on the web reaps the benefits of being easily available to the employees of the company, while not being public information.
As you pointed out, CGI, is a good way to do this. But like I said it isn't public information.
-
Great! :-(
/. effect at nytimes partners section, and then they will get rid of "partners" deeplinking.
Now you are going to cause a
How's that for irony?
-
Of course /. uses the Mozilla picture a lot. CmdrTaco just admit today that he liked it (See the netscape 6 story).
I love the Mozilla logo, too. The red star with the dinosaur is kind of like Wild West meets Godzilla...
...or even better, Chinese Communism meets Barney the Dinosaur!
-
12 times, if you count innovation, too!
Didn't amazon.com patent innovation? I sense another lawsuit in the works!
-
culturaltheftreallyblowsstopg estop
currentpositionisusaandienjoyusaculturestop
executethiefatoncestop
locatemissingenigmamachinesoicanencodethismessa
endoftransmissionstop
Thanks
These are the kind of opinions that I wanted to hear. I wasn't trying to cause a flame war or anything.
-
What the symposium didn't say...
When is Judgement Day (from Terminator series) really going to happen?
Those people will be the ones responsible for it!!
-
This isn't flame bait! I've never met Douglas Hofstader, but someone told me that he was like a pompous jerk in real life.
Would someone please comment otherwise so that I have an accurate and hopefully better opinion of him?
I loved Godel, Escher, Bach.
-
You have a good point. I kinda jumped the gun by implying that your security holes were bugs in the software.
I didn't think anyone else was implying that the only way to contribute to the open source movement was to write code. I certainly didn't say that.
As far as the user interfaces go, open source software tends to lag behind commercial code because it doesn't need to be sold. The GUI is what basically sells one company's program over a competitor's. 90% of the computing population only notice differences in the user interface between competing software. This is why gnome/enlightenment and KDE may be good for Linux in the long run.
-
I think that most of the memory hogging features in Mozilla are pretty relevant and needed. For example, enabling MathML. I wish all the current webbrowsers were MathML enabled, but we have a long way to go.
-
It's nice to have you back, OOG!
I'm looking forward to more of your posts.
Sincerely,
BEN THE OPEN SOURCE GEEKMAN
For crying out loud everyone! Timothy may have said it in a difficult way, but HE HAS A GOOD POINT!
/. reader.
His point is this: Eee huupe thaat uum dooses non-seenseekal. Eee huupe thaat yuuuu dooonn't booothar triiiing tu mike seensa ot oll!
Don't forget that either. It's true for every
Thanks Timothy, I feel inspired.
Just because were all 'technical' slashdotters, doesn't mean that we are immune to internet porn!
Before you moderate me down, just think about the last time you checked out your own selection of porn sites/newsgroups!!! Wouldn't you pay $$$ to see internet porn quicktimes?
The QT player would be free anyway, so we don't have to pay.
;-)
This is awesome! I didn't think others were interested in this kind of stuff the same way that my friend and I are.
...and... they're usually willing to open that locked door to the roof/steam-tunnel.
/. effect the steam-tunnels!!
At my school we've found some crazy places, but our current challenge is on top of a tall smokestack. It's now unused, but taller then anything else on campus.
Here's a tip that's not in that article:
Become good friends with the custodial staff. As a grad student, I bullsh&t with the custodians for my office all the time. They are really cool,
-Let's
I'll admit that the RDRAM might be a bad idea, but Intel's recent decisions regarding the IA-64 have been great.
;-)
I mainly like how they have worked closely with HP in order to develop a chip that meets both companies needs. This partnership will result in an awesome chip with revolutionary branch prediction technology. It's headed for the HP workstations and servers as soon as it comes out, and they will fly! This year's new HP servers/workstations have a special controller which can be removed and an IA-64 swapped in fot the current HP processor. Now, that's upgradeability!
Perhaps Intel should concentrate only on processors and not back dumb ideas. (Weren't they the ones who wanted to encrypt the signal to your monitor?)
p.s. I don't work for HP.
-
Since there seems to be a mathematical slant to that post, I'd like to mention that Netscape 6 WON'T have MathML implemented.
If you want to view MathML, you still need to download nightly builds of Mozilla from http://mozilla.org
Hopefully, we'll be able to display our wonderful equations on the web soon!!
-
if you add the word 'linux' to the title, then you can double that value!
-
"For ones bought at Circuit City, currently the only i-opener's retail outlet..."
Actually CompUSA carries them now.
Check it out. They've gotten a demo model in in Lansing, Michigan. The rest will arrive this week.
-
It makes me SOOOOO angry...
On one hand I want to abide by copyright laws and not steal/pirate information that doesn't belong to me,
but,
on the other hand the large corporations (DVD, Music industry, etc.) are raping us and stealing our right to innovate, so that they can make money.
I guess that's capitalism.
Anyone want to move to the Catskills backwoods with me?
If you read the article, he makes it clear why he needed to rack the iMac.
I think this modification is akin to putting a VW bug frame/interior/motor into a Dodge pick-up truck (but they both use a standard ATX battery!).
-
With Regards to pressuring them for a 'linux-ready,' 'easier to modify' model, this is there nice reply to a letter I sent them. I also asked for a copy of the QNX license, and the root password:
=-==-=-==-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Dear XXXXX
We appreciate your interest in our product and our company.
We understand that a group of individuals recently developed a way to run
the Linux operating system on the i-opener by making modifications to the
hardware and removing our software. The modifications allow these highly
technical users to bypass the i-opener service network. These modifications
are isolated to the i-openers purchased by those individuals and have no
impact whatsoever on the Netpliance service network or its customers.
It's worth noting that the work-around these individuals developed does not
provide them with free Internet service. While it has opened up a complex
route to other Internet Service Providers, virtually all of our i-opener
customers have no interest nor the technical skills in manipulating the
complex inner workings of the device to achieve that goal. i-opener
customers are looking for one thing: simple, inexpensive Internet access
without a computer. As this is our primary audience, we do not provide
documentation regarding the QNX operating system.
That said, the small community of users who developed this work-around
actually offer a complement to the core technology behind the i-opener -
that it's robust enough to run an operating system like Linux. Netpliance
does not endorse the modification of the i-opener device to possibly support
alternative operating systems or other uses. However, these developments
have uncovered an additional opportunity that Netpliance had not been
focusing on, but will now consider. We'll keep you updated as to how
Netpliance plans to work with the growing community of Linux developers.
Regards,
Kristi Copeland
Director - Sales and Support
Play-do CAD would cool too!
;-)
...except that it would require complex Finite Volume routines in order to determine plastic deformation and viscous flow. --fun but tough.
I bet that just sqeezing Pla-Do through the "star extruder" would tie up that new IBM Beowulf cluster for 2 days!!!
I'll just be happy with Lego CAD.
I love the part about...
(warning, quote from memory, may not be right)
"I always wondered about kids who build lego toys out of any color legos, mixing and matching colors, with no order or patterns. I'd hate to see the code that they program nowadays."