(1) The OGP product is OPEN ARCHITECTURE. It's intended to be compatible with open source SOFTWARE.
(2) There is a specific plan to make the "blueprints" to the hardware also available under GPL and LGPL at various points. ALL of the IP and schematics for the first product (the prototype board) will be open source.
(3) Hardware always costs money.
(4) This is a real product, being designed by experienced hardware engineers who have all the expertise necessary to do it. To the hardware designers it is not a "hobby".
When you buy a proprietary piece of software, you are at the mercy of the vendor to fix problems for you, and since they are the only ones that CAN fix problems, it invariably takes them a long time to do it. With open source software, you won't find yourself out of luck when the vendor won't return your calls; hypothetically, you can fix it yourself.
Proprietary software firms are good for a few things. They can pool enough resources into one place and do enough crap work to do some things right. Consider Apple and user interface design, for instance. Also consider things like Synopsys, where the application is so specialized that there isn't enough demand to attact the attention of open source developers.
But when it comes to common tools, open source hackers engage in a democratic meritocracy. Whoever does the best job wins. And the tools make the source code available so end users can engage in fixing and augmenting them.
Also note that pooling resources and open source are not mutually exclusive. Consider TrollTech, MySQL, and various Linux vendors. Freedom AND good tools.
I have nothing against McVoy (Bitkeeper guy) and his desire to produce a closed-source source code management tool. But nobody should be surprised that using it for the Linux kernel turned into a huge controvercy, resulting in reverse engineering. NOBODY. Think about the zealots we're dealing with here. It's a total inability to understand the culture he was dealing with that has McVoy taking so much heat.
So, what you're saying is that the asteriod will hit just about at the same time that 32-bit UNIX machines reach the end of time?
Re:It would not be good for Dell's bottom line
on
Dell Still Intel Only
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
And people who don't think about what new developments will cost them risk their entire business. I'm not saying I'm happy that Dell doesn't offer AMD chips. I'm saying that, based on what I've had to learn about business, I would say that it falls right in line with what I would suggest if I were Dell. Dell runs their business on low-profit-margin computers. More than a few customer support calls from you, and they haven't made any money from your purchase. That's how this sort of business works. It's very tightly controlled--manufacturers of commodity equipment have to make sure they make a profit while pricing low enough to beat their competitors. It's very difficult to do this.
Well, it seems to me that they should have made that file format ASCII encoded just so it could be posted anywhere.
It would not be good for Dell's bottom line
on
Dell Still Intel Only
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
If Dell decided to use Intel and AMD processors, they would have to dedicate resources to another product line. It's likely that for all their different models, Dell has a very limited number of motherboards and other such pieces of hardware. If they were to adopt AMD, they would have to dedicate development and support resources to a whole other set of product lines. It's just not worth it. They have their designs that work, they have their production lines in place, and they have their customer service set up. Adding AMD just makes things doubly complicated and eats into their profit margins. There is a huge barrier to adoption that they are just not going to be able to justify, no matter what the "demand" seems to be. People think AMD boxes would be cheaper, but for Dell to support them, they would not be.
It seems that the servers holding the.torrent files are overloaded. Funny. But is there any reason why one could not post the contents of the.torrent file as a comment on slashdot? Is it binary?
All I can say is that I was delighted when I'd heard that Eddy Izzard was being considered for the role. Of course, that may have been untrue, but it would have been brilliant!
GNOME's been slipping for some time now, really. They've always been more bloated than KDE, and they've even admitted so. For instance, a gconsole tab uses 300K, while a konsole tab uses 50K. The user experience has also been slipping. Their usability engineers, if they have any, aren't doing any usability studies. Mind you, KDE aren't either, but their usability seems better.
The drawback to eliminating GNOME is not the loss of the GNOME UI, but the loss of the GNOME libraries, which allow one to run GNOME apps under KDE. But it IS a huge reduction in what has to be built and packaged, a huge reduction in disk usage, and a huge reduction in memory bloat.
GNOME people need to get on the stick, cut the fat, improve the quality of the user experience, and make their system easlier to use.
I think part of their problem is over-dependence on RPC. Too many things are done by launching another process, and then calling a procedure in the other process. I suppose the RPC interface itself isn't that bloated (or is it?), but just think about the overhead!
The topic of depth of information and the internet has been thought of before. When you interact with people, you get more than just information; you also get facial expressions, nuances, tone of voice, and actually quite a bit more information on the particular topic you're interested in. Additionally, learning when interacting with people imposes structure on the presentation of knowledge. When dealing with the web, it's random, poorly structured, and completely lacks any of the human element.
The internet is a useful source of information, but those who use it as their exclusive resource don't get a rich experience that's good for learning efficiently or being creative.
(I know about this stuff, because my wife just did a paper on it.)
My wife is studying Library Information Science. In one class, she studied information retrieval. Here's what's interesting: It appears that although Google has much success with determining relevance by using PageRank, it's still very literal about the words you pick. Although it appears to do stemming (ie. 'runner' matches 'running'), it doesn't do anything about synonyms. Now, here, I'll point out that the the textbook for my wife's class was written in like 1995. In the SECOND CHAPTER, they talk about basic query techniques that make use of patterns in documents and AUTOMATICALLY derive what words are synonyms or in some way semantically related. These are long-solved problems. Some search engines employ human-generated lists of synonmyns, and there are whole databases you can download that contain semantic networks.
So, WHY, I ask, is google only now getting around to using these techniques?
I'd call myself a Democrat, but they're a bunch of bleeding hearts who want to take from those who work and give to those who don't. I'd call myself a Libertarian, but they're a bunch of pansy-ass isolationists who wouldn't lift a finger to defend their country. I'd call myself a Republican, but they're a bunch of ram-it-down-your-throat morality police who think they know what's best for everyone to believe.
Part of the problem with gaming on Linux is the derth of open source graphics drivers. Furthermore, closed-source drivers for Linux tend to be substandard compared to their Windows counterparts. As such, I'd like to point to the Open Graphics Project.
Anything Tech Source writes, in terms of software/drivers, will be released under a license which basically says "pick whatever open source license you want to use for this".
I've read some reviews on the Pentium M, and its power requirements are impressively low. I wonder what kind of performance you could get out of it if you overclocked it to the point where its power requirements were similar to the P4. There may be other reasons why that's impossible, but I'm sure you could still overclock it significantly, and that seems like a resonable thing to do for desktops which can afford the power requirements.
Statistically, men tend to be more visual, and women tend to be more auditory. The trend is significant. However, it is only a trend, and I have known plenty of men who were very auditory and females who were very visual.
Math and science are typically presented in a visual way which may be a barrier for auditory learners. This biases it against most females, but not because they lack math and science talent but because the information is presented in a less than optimal format for them.
My wife is very auditory. She, unsurprisingly, finds it somewhat difficult to understand many math and science texts. But she really enjoys reading Scientific American articles about the same topics. When I explain math or science to her in a manner more compatible with her thinking style, she has no trouble understanding it, and she is able to draw correct inferences that I, a visual learner, would not necessarily have been able to see so easily.
The "scholarly work" being referred to may be suffering from the same problem that people have when they conclude that language is easier than science. The truth is that science is easy but it seems hard because it's presented badly. Language is hard, but it looks easy because all the good writers work so hard at making things understandable.
Slashdot Mirror
Just to make it clear:
(1) The OGP product is OPEN ARCHITECTURE. It's intended to be compatible with open source SOFTWARE.
(2) There is a specific plan to make the "blueprints" to the hardware also available under GPL and LGPL at various points. ALL of the IP and schematics for the first product (the prototype board) will be open source.
(3) Hardware always costs money.
(4) This is a real product, being designed by experienced hardware engineers who have all the expertise necessary to do it. To the hardware designers it is not a "hobby".
When you buy a proprietary piece of software, you are at the mercy of the vendor to fix problems for you, and since they are the only ones that CAN fix problems, it invariably takes them a long time to do it. With open source software, you won't find yourself out of luck when the vendor won't return your calls; hypothetically, you can fix it yourself.
Proprietary software firms are good for a few things. They can pool enough resources into one place and do enough crap work to do some things right. Consider Apple and user interface design, for instance. Also consider things like Synopsys, where the application is so specialized that there isn't enough demand to attact the attention of open source developers.
But when it comes to common tools, open source hackers engage in a democratic meritocracy. Whoever does the best job wins. And the tools make the source code available so end users can engage in fixing and augmenting them.
Also note that pooling resources and open source are not mutually exclusive. Consider TrollTech, MySQL, and various Linux vendors. Freedom AND good tools.
Fair point. But there was no crime in Tridge reverse engineering BitKeeper.
I have nothing against McVoy (Bitkeeper guy) and his desire to produce a closed-source source code management tool. But nobody should be surprised that using it for the Linux kernel turned into a huge controvercy, resulting in reverse engineering. NOBODY. Think about the zealots we're dealing with here. It's a total inability to understand the culture he was dealing with that has McVoy taking so much heat.
So, what you're saying is that the asteriod will hit just about at the same time that 32-bit UNIX machines reach the end of time?
And people who don't think about what new developments will cost them risk their entire business. I'm not saying I'm happy that Dell doesn't offer AMD chips. I'm saying that, based on what I've had to learn about business, I would say that it falls right in line with what I would suggest if I were Dell. Dell runs their business on low-profit-margin computers. More than a few customer support calls from you, and they haven't made any money from your purchase. That's how this sort of business works. It's very tightly controlled--manufacturers of commodity equipment have to make sure they make a profit while pricing low enough to beat their competitors. It's very difficult to do this.
Well, it seems to me that they should have made that file format ASCII encoded just so it could be posted anywhere.
If Dell decided to use Intel and AMD processors, they would have to dedicate resources to another product line. It's likely that for all their different models, Dell has a very limited number of motherboards and other such pieces of hardware. If they were to adopt AMD, they would have to dedicate development and support resources to a whole other set of product lines. It's just not worth it. They have their designs that work, they have their production lines in place, and they have their customer service set up. Adding AMD just makes things doubly complicated and eats into their profit margins. There is a huge barrier to adoption that they are just not going to be able to justify, no matter what the "demand" seems to be. People think AMD boxes would be cheaper, but for Dell to support them, they would not be.
It seems that the servers holding the .torrent files are overloaded. Funny. But is there any reason why one could not post the contents of the .torrent file as a comment on slashdot? Is it binary?
All I can say is that I was delighted when I'd heard that Eddy Izzard was being considered for the role. Of course, that may have been untrue, but it would have been brilliant!
Why do I give a damn about other humans surving in space if I don't survive?
I hate Verizon. I could never get a good signal anywhere!
GNOME's been slipping for some time now, really. They've always been more bloated than KDE, and they've even admitted so. For instance, a gconsole tab uses 300K, while a konsole tab uses 50K. The user experience has also been slipping. Their usability engineers, if they have any, aren't doing any usability studies. Mind you, KDE aren't either, but their usability seems better.
The drawback to eliminating GNOME is not the loss of the GNOME UI, but the loss of the GNOME libraries, which allow one to run GNOME apps under KDE. But it IS a huge reduction in what has to be built and packaged, a huge reduction in disk usage, and a huge reduction in memory bloat.
GNOME people need to get on the stick, cut the fat, improve the quality of the user experience, and make their system easlier to use.
I think part of their problem is over-dependence on RPC. Too many things are done by launching another process, and then calling a procedure in the other process. I suppose the RPC interface itself isn't that bloated (or is it?), but just think about the overhead!
The topic of depth of information and the internet has been thought of before. When you interact with people, you get more than just information; you also get facial expressions, nuances, tone of voice, and actually quite a bit more information on the particular topic you're interested in. Additionally, learning when interacting with people imposes structure on the presentation of knowledge. When dealing with the web, it's random, poorly structured, and completely lacks any of the human element.
The internet is a useful source of information, but those who use it as their exclusive resource don't get a rich experience that's good for learning efficiently or being creative.
(I know about this stuff, because my wife just did a paper on it.)
My wife is studying Library Information Science. In one class, she studied information retrieval. Here's what's interesting: It appears that although Google has much success with determining relevance by using PageRank, it's still very literal about the words you pick. Although it appears to do stemming (ie. 'runner' matches 'running'), it doesn't do anything about synonyms. Now, here, I'll point out that the the textbook for my wife's class was written in like 1995. In the SECOND CHAPTER, they talk about basic query techniques that make use of patterns in documents and AUTOMATICALLY derive what words are synonyms or in some way semantically related. These are long-solved problems. Some search engines employ human-generated lists of synonmyns, and there are whole databases you can download that contain semantic networks.
So, WHY, I ask, is google only now getting around to using these techniques?
I'd call myself a Democrat, but they're a bunch of bleeding hearts who want to take from those who work and give to those who don't. I'd call myself a Libertarian, but they're a bunch of pansy-ass isolationists who wouldn't lift a finger to defend their country. I'd call myself a Republican, but they're a bunch of ram-it-down-your-throat morality police who think they know what's best for everyone to believe.
Part of the problem with gaming on Linux is the derth of open source graphics drivers. Furthermore, closed-source drivers for Linux tend to be substandard compared to their Windows counterparts. As such, I'd like to point to the Open Graphics Project.
It seems that you didn't read the article and have no idea what this project is all about. None. At all.
People have been asking nVidia and ATI to open their drivers for a LONG time. They still don't want to do it.
Anything Tech Source writes, in terms of software/drivers, will be released under a license which basically says "pick whatever open source license you want to use for this".
Sure, I don't see why not. With open specs, it can be ported to ANY platform.
I've read some reviews on the Pentium M, and its power requirements are impressively low. I wonder what kind of performance you could get out of it if you overclocked it to the point where its power requirements were similar to the P4. There may be other reasons why that's impossible, but I'm sure you could still overclock it significantly, and that seems like a resonable thing to do for desktops which can afford the power requirements.
Intel's finally learning the lesson everyone else knew about 5 years ago. Too little, too late? Or can Centrino save them?
Instead of fleeing this universe into another one, why not escape into the past of this universe? :)
Statistically, men tend to be more visual, and women tend to be more auditory. The trend is significant. However, it is only a trend, and I have known plenty of men who were very auditory and females who were very visual.
Math and science are typically presented in a visual way which may be a barrier for auditory learners. This biases it against most females, but not because they lack math and science talent but because the information is presented in a less than optimal format for them.
My wife is very auditory. She, unsurprisingly, finds it somewhat difficult to understand many math and science texts. But she really enjoys reading Scientific American articles about the same topics. When I explain math or science to her in a manner more compatible with her thinking style, she has no trouble understanding it, and she is able to draw correct inferences that I, a visual learner, would not necessarily have been able to see so easily.
The "scholarly work" being referred to may be suffering from the same problem that people have when they conclude that language is easier than science. The truth is that science is easy but it seems hard because it's presented badly. Language is hard, but it looks easy because all the good writers work so hard at making things understandable.