I tend to think it is more when the Linux community views Windows as a nasty app that needs to be controlled and managed. Something like Xen is an interesting step in that direction--but the installation onto a machine that already has Windows on it would need to be really seemless(and Xen appears to only be supporting newer versions of Windows like XP).
The big thing that I would like to see: Improve Wine so that if you have a win98 license, they'll make more use of the Microsoft DLL's--and improve the installation and documentation to that installing into a situation in which Win98 already exists is _seemless_.
What I'd ideally want here: Take _nothing_ away from folks that already have a Windows license on their machine(particularly if this is an older license)
Add Linux functionality.
Here at the district, we have some fokls that know that Windows networking and security is rather lacking--but they are a bit intimidated by the Linux learning curve. The fact that Novell is moving towards Linux is a big draw here. The next biggest draw IMHO would be to make the win98 machines work better so that the life of these machines can be extended--and the software can be update at lower cost than the microsoft route.
When you are talking a cash-strapped customer with thousands of machines, those sort of things really do add up. I don't think it is just school districts-cost savings is going to be more of an issue for a lot of organizations over time--if the Linux community can simply make it clear that Linux is the logical, low cost upgrade path then in time Microsoft will feel the heat.
I work for a large public school district. We use Win 2000 server quite a bit(that may be changing with the movement of Novell to Linux). The place where the district lags behind quite a bit is on the desktop-we still have _thousands_ of Windows 98 machines out there because there simply isn't funding to upgrade the hardware/OS's. What would be really compelling in our case is a really nice desktop version that had Wine that worked seemlessly _and would use existing Win98 DLL's and libraries if available. Basically, I'd see that as an alternative to a Win 2K or Win XP upgrade that would breath some new life into these old machines. We'd get a lot more functionality with Linux _but_ short of doing a dual boot, I haven't seen a way to keep the functionality that Win98 has--and the district has what is for it quite a substantial investment in Windows software--and training in Windows applications for its staff.
What I'm saying here is that part of the logical niche for a free OS is as an alternative upgrade path for folks that are finding that Windows simply doesn't give them an economically viable upgrade path. Microsoft is ceasing support of Win98. Now, to put this in perspective, even among folks outside of the district that hit our web page, over 20% are using older versions of Windows(ME,98,95) compared to less than 1% for Linux-and 4-5% for Macintosh.
Its always seemed to me that folks pushing desktop Linux generally assume that folks will ditch many of their windows applications(I know Wine works, but last I checked it was still a bit limited in what applications it would support) or at least substantially retrain themselves to use Linux. I tend to think that just being the viable upgrade path for older hardware is the type of thing that will take Linux clearly past Macintosh in terms of numbers.
Will your film examine how guest worker visa programs like H-1b/L-1 have been used to facilitate outsourcing? Will you explore how the combination of outsourcing and changes to immigration policy have combined to affect IT employment in the US?
Will you look at how political donations have been used to affect policy in the areas of outsourcing and immigration to create policy decisions to which the American public was broadly opposed?
The reason why folks might consider non-terrestrial materials for shielding of satellites is that those materials require minimal refinement and it is theoretically cheaper to transport from the moon than from the earth.
Now, I would agree that there may first be use of recycled orbiting "garbage" first.
I think you have this backwards. The question is could the outsourcing boom happen without an army of US-based H-1b and L-1 visa holders? The reduction of the H-1b quota--at the same time the L-1 quota was effectively eliminated strikes me as a con job(just FYI the full effects of the elimination of the L-1 quota won't be felt until after the 2004 election--the one area in which L-1 requirements are tighter is that L-1 visas require the visa holder to demonstrated continous employment before they get the visa).
communications isn't raw materials--but manufacture of communications infrastructure requires substantial use of raw materials. An early application of non-terrestrial materials might be creating shielding for communications satellites-it is potentially a lot cheaper to take mass from the moon into earth orbit than from the surface of the earth.
Even mining the moon or asteroids for metals could happen fairly soon. The type of teleoperated infrastructure you need for basic mining isn't all that great-as O'Neil pointed out over 25 years ago--it would be even easier now because electronics is better.
As far as Japan, the changes in Japan are less than 60 years old-that is hardly a blip in that country's history. Also the people of Japan have had effective frontiers(albeit modest ones)-Japanese have settled successfully in places like the US(Hawaii and the West Coast), Peru, Brazil and other places.
IMHO the thing that changed Japan was contact with a culture(i.e. the US) that was more pioneering in some key respects at the time than was Japan. WW II was a humiliating defeat-and it forced the Japanese to focus on areas where they could surpass the United States(i.e. product quality).
Its not about bringing materials back to earth. There are substantial advantages to housing technological and industrial infrastructure in space-as was pointed out by Gerard O'Neill years ago.
The point of rockets isn't to help mass transportion--we're still _really_ early in the development of space. There _are_ other proposals for things like space elevators--that are theoretically possible--and would make migration to space relatively inexpensive. There is a lot to do though between now and then. Rockets can help us do the types of investigation necessary to figure out what the really high return industries might be that will make space happen. For example, the latest "space tourist" is a material scientist. It is plausible that investigations like his may show how to create valuable materials that only can be created under conditions of zero-gee and vacuum.
Are you aware of any cases in which there has been successful legal action against an H-1b employer on those grounds? I've seen things like approval of H-1b visas at a rate below minimum wage laws(this was done by an anti-H-1b activist to show how poorly the screening for applications was being done).
My own sense here: neither the spirit nor the letter of the law matter in this case. The expansion of H-1b over the objections of 82% of the American public is just what happens when a country allows things like political donations to play such a huge role in government-rule of law ceases to exist.
It isn't a question of the availability of the materials-but also the consequences of using them and the advantages of using them in a particular location. For example, there are some advantages to having things like communications instrastructure in orbit.
Actually, there was a whole series of aviation prizes around the time of the Wright Brothers:
Chanute urged the brothers to try for some of the aviation prizes that were being offered for flights of specified times and distances, which would have established their dominance in the public's mind. They refused. "We would have to expose our machine more or less, and that might interfere with the sale of our secrets," they wrote to a friend in January 1906. "We appreciate the honor and the prestige that would come with the winning of a prize...but we can hardly afford at the present time to jeopardize our other interests in doing it."
First off, it isn't a matter of bringing materials back to earth. The fundamental question is the surface of a planet the right place for a technological civilization or would technological infrastructure be better placed someplace else--and the earth's surface perserved as a unique and valuable enviornment.
The basic problems with population control mechanisms:
Not all people want to have their population controlled
The folks doing the controlling have a nasty habit of seeing people like themselves as the ones that should be most exempt from controls
Reliance on moral persuasion to create population control tends to select for people lead likely to respond to moral persuasion
There _may_ be some folks that can successfully create a population control policy that has no negative side effects-and doesn't require an authoritarian government(i.e. like that in China) to administer--and isn't accompanied with various nastiness(i.e. like what the Chinese are doing to the Tibetans)---but I sure haven't seen it.
At the present time, it still appears to me far more likely to me that humanity will get into space than humanity will institute a democratic, non-authoritarian, non-genocidal world order with population stability and preservation of human diversity and that doesn't include space development.
My sense is that societies without frontiers have an inherent tendency to become authoritarian and insular--I really can't think of good exceptions.
I personally feel that a lot of pressing problems would be solved if humanity gets into space in a serious way. Quite simply, existing growth of energy and raw material apprears unlikely to continue without utilization of non-terrestrial materials. IMHO it is also likely that the type of sacrifices necessary to create an economically viable human presence in space is far less than the sacrifices that would be involved if a war is fought to settle the issues here(i.e. given the technological level of weaponry).
I personally see humanities choice as between creating an economically viable presence in space-and gradually moving industry there-as Gerard O'Neill at Princeton proposed-or facing the probability of nuclear war or worse. In light of that, I _do_ think that a lot of risk is warrented to create a human presence in space.
Even if I'm wrong here, people risk their lives for far less worthwhile objectives(i.e. look at the folks that die after drug overdoses, drunk driving accidents or of AIDS).
The folks that say the risk here isn't warrented are generally envious, cowardly whiners that know that noone like them has a shot at ever winning a competition of this nature--and are afraid that if someone else gets a little bit of increases status it will be that much less left for them. Such cowards have taken the earth to the brink of disaster. Playing it safe-and avoiding the search for poritive sum technological solutions to humanity's major problems is a major root of the enormous decimation of species and genocide of entire peoples--folks don't even put sigificant effort into conceiving of truly positive sum approaches to humanity's future they are so stuck in a narrow way of looking at the world.
To allow IMS programs to run under Linux? I realize that isn't the whole problem-since it is VERY expensive to shut some of these systems down for _any_ period of time.
It just seems like there is $3billion in business up for grabs to whoever does the software first.
There is quite a bit of stuff that could be done in the open source area to promote peace and improve the legitimate needs of nations to defend themselves. My own favorite is development of a network of 802.11b web cams that form a mesh network. The idea is that these could be scattered on a border area so that it would be much more possible to monitor those borders. Theoretically this could be inexpensively enough that even poor countries could afford it.
This might not stop invasions, but do countries really want their agreesions towards their neighbors to be televised live-and unedited?
If computer prices drop, then the total costs associated with hiring engineers go down. That means that certain projects become viable that aren't now and markets expand.
I think a very good case can be made that the introduction of Linux was the key factor in making the internet bloom as a business tool. Expensive AT&T Unix couldn't make that happen-inexpensive Linux could.
My contention is that the Microsoft/Intel monopolies are at this point a major drain on the salaries of software engineers world-wide--because they actively tend to keep computing more expensive than it would be otherwise.
Those monopolies may even be a threat to world peace. Really, cheap computing means things like even relatively poor countries can protect their borders by placing secure web cams everywhere along their periphery. That would in some cases remove any doubt of who the agressive nation is in the case of border disputes. I'm giving this mainly as an example of what we can do with really, really inexpensive computing.
Well, there are _still_ some bottlenecks here. It looks like IBM isn't really Open Sourcing the chip design-just trying to license it on reasonable terms. I suspect they'll have to go further to make this _really_ take off(i.e. have a design that is available with no royalty charges). If there is a truly open source design that is really cheap, I suspect we'll see this combined with the market Sun is developing at Walmart to imply $100 PC's.
Now, I think this goes beyond a 80's application delivery platform. With $100 PC's, we can start to seriously look at things like a PC on every students desk in elementary schools-and a PC as an interface to just about every machine in creation
Moore has been able to place a _lot_ of cpu's on a single chip because his underlying design is so dang simple-and it is something that one(albeit VERY smart) guy can create/understand.
In the current state of the art, that may not be that big of a deal, but eventually, we are going to need to go beyond these huge, complicated facilities if we want to keep on delivering a better cost/performance ratio.
From what I can see(and I don't claim to be a chip design expert) Moore's stuff has potentially huge advantages when it comes to power consumption and miniturization. When you are trying to make really, really small designs(say stuff to fit on a robot the size of a fly), I suspect Moore's designs will be there _long_ before PowerPC will.
The way software engineers make money is continually showing a higher price/performance ratio. Microsoft and Intel are two big monopolies that eat at the pocket of every single software engineer. Replacing the WinTel monopoly with something truly open architecture is the type of thing that will be necessary to jump-start IT--which in the US is starting to become a declining industry. We need to think about how to produce $50 PC's--and just open sourcing the OS, CPU and memory design is a big step in that direction.
IBM does seem to be trying here-though I doubt the PowerPC architecture is really a huge money maker for them though. Still, simply having a base of acceptence and a reasonably licensed design is only part of the equation here.
The underlying problem with major chip architectures is that they require a cast of thousands to design and implement. I aware of only one exception to that rule: Chuck Moore's Forth Chips. Chuck has acheived a lot in that area working either alone or with a few others.
The sheer complexity of modern chip design seems likely to be a problem as we try to build smaller, lower power machines-or work CPU's into micro-machine and eventually nanotechnology devices.
Slashdot Mirror
I tend to think it is more when the Linux community views Windows as a nasty app that needs to be controlled and managed. Something like Xen is an interesting step in that direction--but the installation onto a machine that already has Windows on it would need to be really seemless(and Xen appears to only be supporting newer versions of Windows like XP).
The big thing that I would like to see:
Improve Wine so that if you have a win98 license, they'll make more use of the Microsoft DLL's--and improve the installation and documentation to that installing into a situation in which Win98 already exists is _seemless_.
What I'd ideally want here:
Take _nothing_ away from folks that already have a Windows license on their machine(particularly if
this is an older license)
Add Linux functionality.
Here at the district, we have some fokls that know that Windows networking and security is rather lacking--but they are a bit intimidated by the Linux learning curve. The fact that Novell is moving towards Linux is a big draw here. The next biggest draw IMHO would be to make the win98 machines work better so that the life of these machines can be extended--and the software can be update at lower cost than the microsoft route.
When you are talking a cash-strapped customer with thousands of machines, those sort of things really do add up. I don't think it is just school districts-cost savings is going to be more of an issue for a lot of organizations over time--if the Linux community can simply make it clear that Linux is the logical, low cost upgrade path then in time Microsoft will feel the heat.
I work for a large public school district. We use Win 2000 server quite a bit(that may be changing with the movement of Novell to Linux). The place where the district lags behind quite a bit is on the desktop-we still have _thousands_ of Windows 98 machines out there because there simply isn't funding to upgrade the hardware/OS's. What would be really compelling in our case is a really nice desktop version that had Wine that worked seemlessly _and would use existing Win98 DLL's and libraries if available. Basically, I'd see that as an alternative to a Win 2K or Win XP upgrade that would breath some new life into these old machines. We'd get a lot more functionality with Linux _but_ short of doing a dual boot, I haven't seen a way to keep the functionality that Win98 has--and the district has what is for it quite a substantial investment in Windows software--and training in Windows applications for its staff.
What I'm saying here is that part of the logical niche for a free OS is as an alternative upgrade path for folks that are finding that Windows simply doesn't give them an economically viable upgrade path. Microsoft is ceasing support of Win98. Now, to put this in perspective, even among folks outside of the district that hit our web page, over 20% are using older versions of Windows(ME,98,95) compared to less than 1% for Linux-and 4-5% for Macintosh.
Its always seemed to me that folks pushing desktop Linux generally assume that folks will ditch many of their windows applications(I know Wine works, but last I checked it was still a bit limited in what applications it would support) or at least substantially retrain themselves to use Linux.
I tend to think that just being the viable upgrade path for older hardware is the type of thing that will take Linux clearly past Macintosh in terms of numbers.
Will your film examine how guest worker visa programs like H-1b/L-1 have been used to facilitate outsourcing? Will you explore how the combination of outsourcing and changes to immigration policy have combined to affect IT employment in the US?
Will you look at how political donations have been used to affect policy in the areas of outsourcing and immigration to create policy decisions to which the American public was broadly opposed?
The reason why folks might consider non-terrestrial materials for shielding of satellites is that those materials require minimal refinement and it is theoretically cheaper to transport from the moon than from the earth.
Now, I would agree that there may first be use of recycled orbiting "garbage" first.
I think you have this backwards. The question is could the outsourcing boom happen without an army of US-based H-1b and L-1 visa holders? The reduction of the H-1b quota--at the same time the L-1 quota was effectively eliminated strikes me as a con job(just FYI the full effects of the elimination of the L-1 quota won't be felt until after the 2004 election--the one area in which L-1 requirements are tighter is that L-1 visas require the visa holder to demonstrated continous employment before they get the visa).
communications isn't raw materials--but manufacture of communications infrastructure requires substantial use of raw materials. An early application of non-terrestrial materials might be creating shielding for communications satellites-it is potentially a lot cheaper to take mass from the moon into earth orbit than from the surface of the earth.
Even mining the moon or asteroids for metals could happen fairly soon. The type of teleoperated infrastructure you need for basic mining isn't all that great-as O'Neil pointed out over 25 years ago--it would be even easier now because electronics is better.
As far as Japan, the changes in Japan are less than 60 years old-that is hardly a blip in that country's history. Also the people of Japan have had effective frontiers(albeit modest ones)-Japanese have settled successfully in places like the US(Hawaii and the West Coast), Peru, Brazil and other places.
IMHO the thing that changed Japan was contact with a culture(i.e. the US) that was more pioneering in some key respects at the time than was Japan. WW II was a humiliating defeat-and it forced the Japanese to focus on areas where they could surpass the United States(i.e. product quality).
Its not about bringing materials back to earth. There are substantial advantages to housing technological and industrial infrastructure in space-as was pointed out by Gerard O'Neill years ago.
The point of rockets isn't to help mass transportion--we're still _really_ early in the development of space. There _are_ other proposals for things like space elevators--that are theoretically possible--and would make migration to space relatively inexpensive. There is a lot to do though between now and then. Rockets can help us do the types of investigation necessary to figure out what the really high return industries might be that will make space happen. For example, the latest "space tourist" is a material scientist. It is plausible that investigations like his may show how to create valuable materials that only can be created under conditions of zero-gee and vacuum.
My own sense here: neither the spirit nor the letter of the law matter in this case. The expansion of H-1b over the objections of 82% of the American public is just what happens when a country allows things like political donations to play such a huge role in government-rule of law ceases to exist.
It isn't a question of the availability of the materials-but also the consequences of using them and the advantages of using them in a particular location. For example, there are some advantages to having things like communications instrastructure in orbit.
Chanute urged the brothers to try for some of the aviation prizes that were being offered for flights of specified times and distances, which would have established their dominance in the public's mind. They refused. "We would have to expose our machine more or less, and that might interfere with the sale of our secrets," they wrote to a friend in January 1906. "We appreciate the honor and the prestige that would come with the winning of a prize...but we can hardly afford at the present time to jeopardize our other interests in doing it."
First off, it isn't a matter of bringing materials back to earth. The fundamental question is the surface of a planet the right place for a technological civilization or would technological infrastructure be better placed someplace else--and the earth's surface perserved as a unique and valuable enviornment.
The basic problems with population control mechanisms:
Not all people want to have their population controlled
The folks doing the controlling have a nasty habit of seeing people like themselves as the ones that should be most exempt from controls
Reliance on moral persuasion to create population control tends to select for people lead likely to respond to moral persuasion
There _may_ be some folks that can successfully create a population control policy that has no negative side effects-and doesn't require an authoritarian government(i.e. like that in China) to administer--and isn't accompanied with various nastiness(i.e. like what the Chinese are doing to the Tibetans)---but I sure haven't seen it.
At the present time, it still appears to me far more likely to me that humanity will get into space than humanity will institute a democratic, non-authoritarian, non-genocidal world order with population stability and preservation of human diversity and that doesn't include space development.
My sense is that societies without frontiers have an inherent tendency to become authoritarian and insular--I really can't think of good exceptions.
The link above has a typo in it, here is the correct link.
I personally see humanities choice as between creating an economically viable presence in space-and gradually moving industry there-as Gerard O'Neill at Princeton proposed-or facing the probability of nuclear war or worse. In light of that, I _do_ think that a lot of risk is warrented to create a human presence in space.
Even if I'm wrong here, people risk their lives for far less worthwhile objectives(i.e. look at the folks that die after drug overdoses, drunk driving accidents or of AIDS).
The folks that say the risk here isn't warrented are generally envious, cowardly whiners that know that noone like them has a shot at ever winning a competition of this nature--and are afraid that if someone else gets a little bit of increases status it will be that much less left for them. Such cowards have taken the earth to the brink of disaster. Playing it safe-and avoiding the search for poritive sum technological solutions to humanity's major problems is a major root of the enormous decimation of species and genocide of entire peoples--folks don't even put sigificant effort into conceiving of truly positive sum approaches to humanity's future they are so stuck in a narrow way of looking at the world.
As a DBA and Linux/Windows user, I don't quite see what the capabilities are that are missing.
Certainly in relational databases you can restrict acess to a database or table to any set of users you want.
To allow IMS programs to run under Linux? I realize that isn't the whole problem-since it is VERY expensive to shut some of these systems down for _any_ period of time.
It just seems like there is $3billion in business up for grabs to whoever does the software first.
There is quite a bit of stuff that could be done in the open source area to promote peace and improve the legitimate needs of nations to defend themselves. My own favorite is development of a network of 802.11b web cams that form a mesh network. The idea is that these could be scattered on a border area so that it would be much more possible to monitor those borders. Theoretically this could be inexpensively enough that even poor countries could afford it.
This might not stop invasions, but do countries really want their agreesions towards their neighbors to be televised live-and unedited?
Seriously, space is a good place for a big chunk of web infrastructure-though near earth orbit would be better than the moon.
If computer prices drop, then the total costs associated with hiring engineers go down. That means that certain projects become viable that aren't now and markets expand.
I think a very good case can be made that the introduction of Linux was the key factor in making the internet bloom as a business tool. Expensive AT&T Unix couldn't make that happen-inexpensive Linux could.
My contention is that the Microsoft/Intel monopolies are at this point a major drain on the salaries of software engineers world-wide--because they actively tend to keep computing more expensive than it would be otherwise.
Those monopolies may even be a threat to world peace. Really, cheap computing means things like even relatively poor countries can protect their borders by placing secure web cams everywhere along their periphery. That would in some cases remove any doubt of who the agressive nation is in the case of border disputes. I'm giving this mainly as an example of what we can do with really, really inexpensive computing.
Seriously, if you look there are various studies that have tracked kids with highly unusual names-it is too frequently a big hassle.
Well, there are _still_ some bottlenecks here. It looks like IBM isn't really Open Sourcing the chip design-just trying to license it on reasonable terms. I suspect they'll have to go further to make this _really_ take off(i.e. have a design that is available with no royalty charges). If there is a truly open source design that is really cheap, I suspect we'll see this combined with the market Sun is developing at Walmart to imply $100 PC's.
Now, I think this goes beyond a 80's application delivery platform. With $100 PC's, we can start to seriously look at things like a PC on every students desk in elementary schools-and a PC as an interface to just about every machine in creation
Moore has been able to place a _lot_ of cpu's on a single chip because his underlying design is so dang simple-and it is something that one(albeit VERY smart) guy can create/understand.
In the current state of the art, that may not be that big of a deal, but eventually, we are going to need to go beyond these huge, complicated facilities if we want to keep on delivering a better cost/performance ratio.
From what I can see(and I don't claim to be a chip design expert) Moore's stuff has potentially huge advantages when it comes to power consumption and miniturization. When you are trying to make really, really small designs(say stuff to fit on a robot the size of a fly), I suspect Moore's designs will be there _long_ before PowerPC will.
The way software engineers make money is continually showing a higher price/performance ratio. Microsoft and Intel are two big monopolies that eat at the pocket of every single software engineer. Replacing the WinTel monopoly with something truly open architecture is the type of thing that will be necessary to jump-start IT--which in the US is starting to become a declining industry. We need to think about how to produce $50 PC's--and just open sourcing the OS, CPU and memory design is a big step in that direction.
IBM does seem to be trying here-though I doubt the PowerPC architecture is really a huge money maker for them though. Still, simply having a base of acceptence and a reasonably licensed design is only part of the equation here.
The underlying problem with major chip architectures is that they require a cast of thousands to design and implement. I aware of only one exception to that rule: Chuck Moore's Forth Chips. Chuck has acheived a lot in that area working either alone or with a few others.
The sheer complexity of modern chip design seems likely to be a problem as we try to build smaller, lower power machines-or work CPU's into micro-machine and eventually nanotechnology devices.