You know, a whiteboard is awesome, but nothing beats the tactile beauty and pleasure of an old fashioned slate chalkboard. My friend grabbed one that was being tossed out of an old University building and we used it all the time.
Solving math problems on that always seemed more satisfying than on a whiteboard (minus the chalk dust).
Either you can call it a amalgamation of the distribution systems (everything distributed by the network), or a glorious break in the holds of the cable companies on how and when we view media, but either way, I think its a good thing.
Personally, I haven't had cable in about 5 years because I just don't want to pay $50/month for 500 channels that I don't care about. I watch about 10 channels overall, and if I could pay for those ala carte, I would, but I'm not going to pay for all of them. This style of distribution is perfect for me and the way I want to purchase media.
However, its going to be hell on advertisers (ha ha), because now they're going to have to do even more market research to figure out where it is worth their time to put advertisements. Technically, it could be the end of in media res advertisements as well. It would be like watching programming made for HBO, purchased on an ad hoc basis. Oooooohhh... I like it.
No, Tridge was not using Bitkeeper and so was, as he says, not under its licence.
If I implied, through anything that I wrote that Tridge did something illegal, I apologize. I think that morally, ethically and legally what Tridge did, and is doing is completely defensible and I have no problem with his actions.
What was, essentially, happening was that Larry is a megalomanic who can't stand the heat so he trys to ban people from the kitchen. A licence which says that you, or people you employ can't work on certain types of programs, in their spare time is not simply a matter of fine detail and holy wars over minutia, it is simply odious and immoral. Larry is an asshole. He may be a brilliant asshole that's written a great source code manager, but he's still an asshole with a totally unacceptable approach to licencing.
Either I didn't get my point across, or you misunderstood what I was trying to say.
What Tridge did, by reverse engineering an open source version of Bitkeeper, was break a business arrangement which was profitable for everyone. While OSDL was using Bitkeeper and Bitkeeper was providing the free version, everyone was a winner. OSDL got to use a very good product for free, and Bitkeeper got some spanky publicity in the form of Linux, arguable the most famous developer in the world, using its product.
However, when Tridge reverse engineered the product, he added in a variable that changed the equation, and it was no longer profitable for McVoy to continue the relationship as it stood. Is McVoy an asshole for doing it? Perhaps. Personally, I think he has to think of his business somewhat, and indirectly funding an open source competitor to your product isn't quite the best business move in the world.
Is there a bad guy here? I don't think so, people are pissed off at either McVoy for pulling the free version, or at Tridge for ruining the relationship. I personally view it as something that was a long time coming and will end up being good for Open Source in the long run.
Now alternatives will be found, or perhaps developed from scratch. Necessity has been created, and something will come to fill it. Bitkeeper will continue on providing a cool SCM product, Linux will continue being a cool kernel, and Tridge will continue reverse engineering cool products.
marc
I think that everyone just needs to take a moment and look at what actually happened here.
Bitkeeper created a truly exceptional source management software. Linus had a problem with what he was currently using, and was in search of a new tool. Bitkeeper provides Linus with a free version which allows him to use the tool, thus providing two things: (1) an exceptional source management tool for Linux, (2) unbelievable publicity for Bitkeeper by having perhaps the most famous developer in the world using and advocating his product.
Fast foward 3 years. Bitkeeper has established itself as a solid company on its own right, and spends a considerable amount of money maintaining the relationship with Linus. An open source developer starts developing an open source version of the Bitkeeper product, which is essentially happening because the product is being given away for free. Essentially, what is happening here is that McVoy is spending money to provide a free version that is actively being used to create an open source competitor to his product.
As much of an open source fan as I am, I have to see McVoy's stance on this. Why should he spend money to indirectly support the creation of a competitor to his product? Because he's got a good heart and knows that it is good in the long run? He's also not stupid, and realizes that the open source version will get along just fine w/o his indirect funding.
Now let's find a villian, shall we?
Option 1: Linus. Linus has done no wrong. He used the best tool at his disposal. It wasn't open source, but it was a small amount of evil for a greater amount of good (linux kernel moved along quite well with bitkeeper). Now he's looking for another solution. Villian? I don't think so. Opportunistic? Definitely.
Option 2: McVoy. McVoy provided Bitkeeper free of charge for 3 years and kept up development on the free version. Changed his mind when Tridge wouldn't quit developing the open source version which essentially reverse engineered the work he had done and created a valid competitor. Made the proper business decision, lost his best marketing tool. Villian? Don't think so. Opportunisitic? Definitely.
Option 3: Tridge. Didn't like using the proprietary software, and decided to reverse engineer what had already been created. This caused McVoy to have problems with the business relationship. Result is that Linus has to find a new SCM solution, but also that new energy will be thrown into SCM in an open source way. Villian? Not at all. Opportunistic? Definitely.
My conclusion? There is no villian here. The entire relationship was doomed to fail eventually. Everyone got something out of it while it lasted. Linus got great source code management. McVoy got _amazing_ advertising. Tridge got to create an open source version of one of the best SCM systems out there. Who is the winner? Probably everyone. Who is the loser? I can't think of one right now.
I understand that most people in this world would much prefer to have a prepacked piece of software that they don't have to fiddle with. They just want it to work, much like the restraunt analogy that you offered, where the restaurant patron would like to just order their food. This is a very valid analogy, for a completely different situation.
It would be valid if open source software didn't, by and large, come pre-packaged so that it would work out of the box. It is definitely true that some of the kinks aren't worked out like their are in professional pieces of software. But I think you're comparing something like Slackware to something like Microsoft Windows, which are completely different things and aimed at completely different people. If you grab your average distribution and plug it in, it will work right out of the box about as well as Microsoft Windows (i.e. hardware will be detected, things will be set up for you, etc). Likewise, if you grab your average 'mature' open source software program, it will work 'out of the box' as well as your average closed source software program.
I actually tried switching back to Eclipse after using IDEA for a job. I just couldn't do it, I went out and forked over the money for IDEA, it was well worth every penny I spent on it.
Seriouslly, I think the only thing I've found that Eclipse is better at than IDEA is in its AspectJ integration.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune has a story on this as well. They were also able to nab a picture of the dude from the local yearbook.
Personally, I still don't understand why you would ever include a bit in the virus that links to your own personal webpage. Talk about an easy way to get caught!!
This is an interesting tactic by DirectTV. From the sounds of it, this really isn't that expensive a way for them to not only stop some no-effort hackers from stealing their signal (as we all know, there are many who just won't stop because they are sent a letter like this), and make some revenue at the same time. I mean, if one of their operators makes 1 settlement per month, they have most likely more than paid their salary. Of course, they have to pay the lawyers a bit of money to sign these letters, but most likely not all that much (my guess is that very few of these actually go to trial, that would take money on DirectTV's side of the game as well).
What I'm curious about is if there is any organization of a class action suit against DirectTV, where the class is the people who have been incorrectly identified by DirectTV as pirates? They would most likely be liable for mental anguish and defamation as well (seriouslly, blaming someone for being a pirate could be very damaging to them, especially to buisiness people).
Here's to hopin'
Re:Only Trillian v0.7x affected?
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Memory is cheap.... and it makes me drool when I realize how much I can put in one machine for very little amounts of money (I just don't want to waste it all running four different chat clients):-)
marc
Re:Only Trillian v0.7x affected?
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AOL vs. Trillian
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But it has everything to do with AOL's decision.
You're totally right there. Methinks that AOL is probably missing the revenue that would come in to help pay for all of the servers that they are running for the AIM system. I wonder if they would have as much of a problem if there was a way to still get that revenue?
For instance, if Trillian was able to show the ads that were supposed to be shown on AIM, or somehow paid AOL a fee in lieu of that (that the users would have to pay). This way, Trillian would get its unified messaging client and AOL wouldn't lose its income source.
If you care that much about your processor usage (plausible) and your memory usage (bullshit. memory is cheap), you should just stick to e-mail.
There are two points that I can make here. First, there is a fundamental difference between IM and email. Technically, its all text sent over the network, but there is a symantical difference in that one is a bit more ephemeral than the other (i.e. email is a bit more official and real than IM, like a fax is more official and real than an email and real mail is more official and real than a fax).
However, this is besides the other point, which is efficiency. Caring about your system resources and caring about efficiency are a bit different. You are correct in that we could all regress back to only email and then not have to worry about any of this. Under those assumptions, though, we should probably move all of our word processing back to pure text editing, and that would have to be done in Notepad for Windows users and vi for unix users as anything else would be hogging too many resources.
The argument that I would make here has more to do with the fact that I have to use 4 different programs that eat up my resources to do essentially the same thing. With a little programming and design magic, you can combine those resources into one program and only pay once for all of the overlapping features. Thus, instead of paying about 10mb for each of my 4 clients (running about 40 mb of ram for all), now I'm paying about 10-15mb to run all 4 protocols.
There is no reason to pay for the same things over and over again (such as many of the resources that each client uses by itself instead of sharing). Its completely about efficiency, one client provides one efficient interface to all the different protocols and saves you a whole bunch of resources that you would otherwise have to pay for.
Throwing more memory at the problem is one way to solve it, but you're patching the problem instead of getting at the root of it. The root being the fact that you are paying about 10mb of memory for each client when you could conceivably pay only once!!!
Anyway... enough ranting for me, back to programming for a very low resource device (can you guess where many of my ideas come from?)
marc
Re:Only Trillian v0.7x affected?
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I disagree. For me, and I suspect this is true of the majority of Trillian users, it comes down to the number of clients running.
I think that this is the key statement right here. The reason that I personally use Trillian (and I think that everyone else that who uses it, that I know), is because you have the ability to combine your 4 different IM clients into one. No longer do you have to worry about messages coming in through 4 different clients, you have one unified front.
I think that if they decided to show ads in order to keep the AIM client running, my bet is that many people would still use it. I personally don't care about the ads anymore. Sure they're annoying, but this stuff has to be paid for somehow!! If I don't want ads that badly, I'll find a way to pay for the product without them.
This isn't about free beer or free speech. It's about free RAM and free processor cycles.
I don't know if I'd go that far. However, I do back up that it saves system resources (that was one of the first reasons I changed -- each client took up about 10mb of ram, and it really started to bug me, technically could have bought more, but throwing more memory at a problem doesn't always solve it, it may temporarily, but inefficient memory use is inefficient memory use).
I'm wondering if there could be some middle ground for them. AOL would possibly allow them to use the protocol in exchange for showing the ads, or for a small fee for every user that actually uses their services. That way, AOL can have the income that used to be generated, and Trillian can have the interoperability that makes it so great.
You may say that I'm a dreamer... but hopefully I'm not the only one.:-)
There are actually a few online (no snide comments needed, I already realize how worthless all of this information is), though my personal favorite would be the morphology tool provided by the perseus project at Tufts.
You never know when people are going to bust out with the old latin forms.
For instance, I've been known to say, "Sometimes, the side effects viri are very detrimental to productivity", I dont' even catch myself until someone points it out!!;-)
I think I pointed this out in one of your previous posts.... "vir" is a latin word meaning "man", but "virus" is a latin word meaning "poison, virus, slime". However, it has some special rules so that "viri" is only its genative singular and not its nominative plural like people want to use it...
Actually, virus IS a latin word, and its nominative plural is viri; it derives from greek and sanskrit, and it translates roughly as "poison, slime, slimy liquid, offensive odor". Both the OED and Merriam-Webster trace the english word virus directly to the latin virus, round about 1599.
Actually, there is no nominative plural of the word "virus". There are a few latin words that are that way, and this happens to be one of them ("viri" is however, the genative singular).
Virus is not a Latin word, it's an English word, and therefore follows English conventions: one virus, many viruses. It is based on the Latin 'vir' but is as English as all get out.
I beg to differ with you on this one. "Virus" is a Latin word. It resembles the word 'vir'(man) in form, but there is another word, if you would actually pick up your dictionary, 'virus' which means essentially 'poison, venom, virus'. If you don't believe me, check out the link to an online Latin dictionary: virus
It's so goddamn easy, yet stupid, stuck-up computer geeks try to make themselves sound important by going around saying "virii" as if it were a Latin word.
Its almost as bad as stupid, stuck up, wannabe grammar police knobs trying to come in and spread the wrong information about things they have absolutely no idea about.
I will hand to you that virii is not a word, I'm not sure where people get that from. If you want to get into entymology and the like, here is a good link that I found that will give you a rundown of what the real dope is, check it out here.
It will certainly be interesting to see where this goes, because if Palm does begin to sell their OS separately, then they'll have money for development. If they have money for development, then we'll see some great enhancements to the Palm OS, and I for one will welcome the change... just so long as they keep supporting my Palm IIIx:-)
Well, technically, the OS and the device have already been separated a little bit. I can think of two different companies that use the PalmOS. Handspring and Symbol both use the PalmOS on their devices, and both of them have their own version of the operating system in order to support some of their added features. However, the strict PalmOS doesn't have these features integrated, so in order to get them you have to buy those devices.
Thus, what you have some is some forked versions of the same operating system (sound familiar?). With the Operating System division separated from the device division, it seems to me as if there is a greater chance for those features developed on other platforms to be integrated into the main OS.
Then, instead of having 3 separate versions of the OS implemented different features. You would have one version of the OS, implementing the whole featureset. Palm can then license out the whole OS to many different companies who have their own personal needs, and the developers for each of these different platforms will have one OS to develop for rather than 3 fragmented versions of the OS.
Hence, Palm is making a bigger play into the OS buisiness than they did before. By doing this, they are not only reaching out to customers to license from them (which they already have), they are reaching out to developers who now only have to track one line of the Operating System rather than trying to merge 3 separate Operating Systems which are almost but not completely unlike each other.
Yeah, but as long as no one is under any impressions that Ximian actually have anything to do with opensource.
Well, there is the fact that they wrote a good portion of evolution, which is open source. So, in that sense they have quite a bit to do with open source, as they have written something that will give their users much of the functionality of Outlook, with the benefits of open source and hopefully a lack of all the security holes. Then everyone gets mad at them for not being completely and totally open source when the offer to sell a proprietary version of their connector in order to put some food on the table.
Personally, I think this is a great thing. The developers at Ximian have produced a product that is very usefull to very many people, and they have done it through the open source model. However, as has been shown by many open source companies deaths, pure open source does not always pay the bills. Thus they have come up with a fairly impressive way to fund their open source project. They get the corporate people and those who really want the functionality of connecting with MS exchange to pay an extra price to keep Ximian going.
I personally think that this is to be lauded rather than condemned. I would have much preferred to have the connector open source, as I would love to ditch windows in favor of linux for the use of exchange. However, I can see the need that they have as well...
I see two things happening because of this... the first, someone is going to start writing an open source version of the Ximian connector, which will force Ximian to either stay on top of things and keep making theirs better, or to open source theirs and find another way to get some money. The second, is that Ximian will come up with some version of incremental releases (or a license system much like Ghostscript), which would provide revenue from corporate sources and then release the source code for others to enjoy.
What could make a judge so hostile to clearly valid academic concerns? Pressure from DOJ or other big-buisiness government interests? The knowledge that her decision ultimately didn't mean squat since the decision would get appealed for decades?
But seriously, what judge could turn down an appeal here? The decision was obviously one-sided.
I think that the reason that this case was thrown out so quickly is that nothing has happened yet. There has been no case proven where someone has published and gotten sued over it yet, so there has been no real constitutional question at hand.
I think the most important bit of information contained in the press release is right here:
The recording industry, represented by the Recording Industry Association of America(RIAA) and the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI)Foundation, threatened to file suit in April 2001 if Felten and his team published their research at a conference. They subsequently issued a press release denying having threatened the researchers.
What I see in this (and it is important to say here that I am not a lawyer) is that there has been no proven conflict as of yet. If the RIAA is denying the threat, then the EFF needs to prove that the threat actually happened. Once they have proved that the threat actually happened, then we actually have ourselves a constitutional question at hand. As it stands right now, there is a supposed constitutional question at hand.
I personally predict that the next appeal will get the much the same result, until one professor stands up and either stands the RIAA down (in which case they will win de facto and things will start to get published as people get braver), or actually goes to court to battle this out the way it should be battled out.
Once there is a proven case of free speech being suppressed on account of the DMCA, then you will see the courts actually start to step in and stop the madness (unfortunately, this will probably take quite some time).
The Debian installer is easy, as long as you know your hardware. Now, the two things that people most frequently site that supposedly would make it easier to use are hardware autodetection and the usage of an X installer.
If you made that comment tongue-in-cheek, then I will laugh along with your great joke. That statement is quite accurate... however, you really can't say that it is easy overall. Debian is usually not aimed at your average, ordinary, everyday (my apologies to Mr. Walsh) computer users who don't understand the fact that sometimes you need to delve into your computer with a flashlight so that you can figure out what the actual chipset is on your old generic network card. Personally, I didn't see _that_ much of a problem with doing that, but your average computer user is going to disagree quite a bit.
Hardware autodetection is great, if you don't mind having it simply not work and freezing a user's system every once in a while. It's not hard to just have a person enter in their hardware.
Again, I think that entering in your hardware isn't the best solution. It will work in a pinch (aka, as a last resort), but you can do so much more to detect what is going on (as has been demonstrated on many platforms). However, there are always going to be those cards and devices that you just can't detect, as they didn't include anything that allows you to detect them!!! So, you can win some of the time, but you can't win all of the time.
The real reason that the Romans wanted Egypt was because of food. As the Republic was begining to fall, politians began to promise the Roman citizens food at a fixed price, which was lowered and lowered until it became free. In order to keep up with this demand, the Romans had to figure out a place to get this food from (they sure as hell weren't going to be able to feed all of the citizens of Rome without some good source of food). In the earlier years they started to use Sicily to produce the massive amounts of food needed to feed the city of Rome, but that had only so much ability to produce.
Coincidentally, Egypt had the Nile River running right through it. The Nile river valley was (and still is) some of the most productive land in the world (I used to have some statistics on how much more productive, I seem to recall a number of around 10 times more, but I can't recall exactly) and thus produced a crapload of excess food which the Egyptians had to use as trade bait, but which Rome saw being much safer in their hands (hungry and desperate citizens mean trouble).
Basically, Egypt was so important to the Romans that it never became a true province (at least around this time), it became the personal estate of the emperor so that he could administer it properly to have the food transported to Rome so that there wouldn't be huge riots.
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You know, a whiteboard is awesome, but nothing beats the tactile beauty and pleasure of an old fashioned slate chalkboard. My friend grabbed one that was being tossed out of an old University building and we used it all the time.
Solving math problems on that always seemed more satisfying than on a whiteboard (minus the chalk dust).
Upon donning the device, the inventor tried it out by crushing a can and proclaimed it "Groovy"
Either you can call it a amalgamation of the distribution systems (everything distributed by the network), or a glorious break in the holds of the cable companies on how and when we view media, but either way, I think its a good thing.
Personally, I haven't had cable in about 5 years because I just don't want to pay $50/month for 500 channels that I don't care about. I watch about 10 channels overall, and if I could pay for those ala carte, I would, but I'm not going to pay for all of them. This style of distribution is perfect for me and the way I want to purchase media.
However, its going to be hell on advertisers (ha ha), because now they're going to have to do even more market research to figure out where it is worth their time to put advertisements. Technically, it could be the end of in media res advertisements as well. It would be like watching programming made for HBO, purchased on an ad hoc basis. Oooooohhh... I like it.
Tell me again. How is this a bad thing?
If I implied, through anything that I wrote that Tridge did something illegal, I apologize. I think that morally, ethically and legally what Tridge did, and is doing is completely defensible and I have no problem with his actions.
Either I didn't get my point across, or you misunderstood what I was trying to say. What Tridge did, by reverse engineering an open source version of Bitkeeper, was break a business arrangement which was profitable for everyone. While OSDL was using Bitkeeper and Bitkeeper was providing the free version, everyone was a winner. OSDL got to use a very good product for free, and Bitkeeper got some spanky publicity in the form of Linux, arguable the most famous developer in the world, using its product. However, when Tridge reverse engineered the product, he added in a variable that changed the equation, and it was no longer profitable for McVoy to continue the relationship as it stood. Is McVoy an asshole for doing it? Perhaps. Personally, I think he has to think of his business somewhat, and indirectly funding an open source competitor to your product isn't quite the best business move in the world. Is there a bad guy here? I don't think so, people are pissed off at either McVoy for pulling the free version, or at Tridge for ruining the relationship. I personally view it as something that was a long time coming and will end up being good for Open Source in the long run. Now alternatives will be found, or perhaps developed from scratch. Necessity has been created, and something will come to fill it. Bitkeeper will continue on providing a cool SCM product, Linux will continue being a cool kernel, and Tridge will continue reverse engineering cool products. marcI think that everyone just needs to take a moment and look at what actually happened here.
Bitkeeper created a truly exceptional source management software. Linus had a problem with what he was currently using, and was in search of a new tool. Bitkeeper provides Linus with a free version which allows him to use the tool, thus providing two things: (1) an exceptional source management tool for Linux, (2) unbelievable publicity for Bitkeeper by having perhaps the most famous developer in the world using and advocating his product.
Fast foward 3 years. Bitkeeper has established itself as a solid company on its own right, and spends a considerable amount of money maintaining the relationship with Linus. An open source developer starts developing an open source version of the Bitkeeper product, which is essentially happening because the product is being given away for free. Essentially, what is happening here is that McVoy is spending money to provide a free version that is actively being used to create an open source competitor to his product.
As much of an open source fan as I am, I have to see McVoy's stance on this. Why should he spend money to indirectly support the creation of a competitor to his product? Because he's got a good heart and knows that it is good in the long run? He's also not stupid, and realizes that the open source version will get along just fine w/o his indirect funding.
Now let's find a villian, shall we?
Option 1: Linus. Linus has done no wrong. He used the best tool at his disposal. It wasn't open source, but it was a small amount of evil for a greater amount of good (linux kernel moved along quite well with bitkeeper). Now he's looking for another solution. Villian? I don't think so. Opportunistic? Definitely.
Option 2: McVoy. McVoy provided Bitkeeper free of charge for 3 years and kept up development on the free version. Changed his mind when Tridge wouldn't quit developing the open source version which essentially reverse engineered the work he had done and created a valid competitor. Made the proper business decision, lost his best marketing tool. Villian? Don't think so. Opportunisitic? Definitely.
Option 3: Tridge. Didn't like using the proprietary software, and decided to reverse engineer what had already been created. This caused McVoy to have problems with the business relationship. Result is that Linus has to find a new SCM solution, but also that new energy will be thrown into SCM in an open source way. Villian? Not at all. Opportunistic? Definitely.
My conclusion? There is no villian here. The entire relationship was doomed to fail eventually. Everyone got something out of it while it lasted. Linus got great source code management. McVoy got _amazing_ advertising. Tridge got to create an open source version of one of the best SCM systems out there. Who is the winner? Probably everyone. Who is the loser? I can't think of one right now.
I understand that most people in this world would much prefer to have a prepacked piece of software that they don't have to fiddle with. They just want it to work, much like the restraunt analogy that you offered, where the restaurant patron would like to just order their food. This is a very valid analogy, for a completely different situation.
It would be valid if open source software didn't, by and large, come pre-packaged so that it would work out of the box. It is definitely true that some of the kinks aren't worked out like their are in professional pieces of software. But I think you're comparing something like Slackware to something like Microsoft Windows, which are completely different things and aimed at completely different people. If you grab your average distribution and plug it in, it will work right out of the box about as well as Microsoft Windows (i.e. hardware will be detected, things will be set up for you, etc). Likewise, if you grab your average 'mature' open source software program, it will work 'out of the box' as well as your average closed source software program.
I actually tried switching back to Eclipse after using IDEA for a job. I just couldn't do it, I went out and forked over the money for IDEA, it was well worth every penny I spent on it.
Seriouslly, I think the only thing I've found that Eclipse is better at than IDEA is in its AspectJ integration.
The Minneapolis Star Tribune has a story on this as well. They were also able to nab a picture of the dude from the local yearbook.
Personally, I still don't understand why you would ever include a bit in the virus that links to your own personal webpage. Talk about an easy way to get caught!!
marcThis is an interesting tactic by DirectTV. From the sounds of it, this really isn't that expensive a way for them to not only stop some no-effort hackers from stealing their signal (as we all know, there are many who just won't stop because they are sent a letter like this), and make some revenue at the same time. I mean, if one of their operators makes 1 settlement per month, they have most likely more than paid their salary. Of course, they have to pay the lawyers a bit of money to sign these letters, but most likely not all that much (my guess is that very few of these actually go to trial, that would take money on DirectTV's side of the game as well).
What I'm curious about is if there is any organization of a class action suit against DirectTV, where the class is the people who have been incorrectly identified by DirectTV as pirates? They would most likely be liable for mental anguish and defamation as well (seriouslly, blaming someone for being a pirate could be very damaging to them, especially to buisiness people).
Here's to hopin'
Memory is cheap.... and it makes me drool when I realize how much I can put in one machine for very little amounts of money (I just don't want to waste it all running four different chat clients) :-)
marc
You're totally right there. Methinks that AOL is probably missing the revenue that would come in to help pay for all of the servers that they are running for the AIM system. I wonder if they would have as much of a problem if there was a way to still get that revenue?
For instance, if Trillian was able to show the ads that were supposed to be shown on AIM, or somehow paid AOL a fee in lieu of that (that the users would have to pay). This way, Trillian would get its unified messaging client and AOL wouldn't lose its income source.
There are two points that I can make here. First, there is a fundamental difference between IM and email. Technically, its all text sent over the network, but there is a symantical difference in that one is a bit more ephemeral than the other (i.e. email is a bit more official and real than IM, like a fax is more official and real than an email and real mail is more official and real than a fax).
However, this is besides the other point, which is efficiency. Caring about your system resources and caring about efficiency are a bit different. You are correct in that we could all regress back to only email and then not have to worry about any of this. Under those assumptions, though, we should probably move all of our word processing back to pure text editing, and that would have to be done in Notepad for Windows users and vi for unix users as anything else would be hogging too many resources.
The argument that I would make here has more to do with the fact that I have to use 4 different programs that eat up my resources to do essentially the same thing. With a little programming and design magic, you can combine those resources into one program and only pay once for all of the overlapping features. Thus, instead of paying about 10mb for each of my 4 clients (running about 40 mb of ram for all), now I'm paying about 10-15mb to run all 4 protocols.
There is no reason to pay for the same things over and over again (such as many of the resources that each client uses by itself instead of sharing). Its completely about efficiency, one client provides one efficient interface to all the different protocols and saves you a whole bunch of resources that you would otherwise have to pay for.
Throwing more memory at the problem is one way to solve it, but you're patching the problem instead of getting at the root of it. The root being the fact that you are paying about 10mb of memory for each client when you could conceivably pay only once!!!
Anyway... enough ranting for me, back to programming for a very low resource device (can you guess where many of my ideas come from?)
marc
I think that this is the key statement right here. The reason that I personally use Trillian (and I think that everyone else that who uses it, that I know), is because you have the ability to combine your 4 different IM clients into one. No longer do you have to worry about messages coming in through 4 different clients, you have one unified front.
I think that if they decided to show ads in order to keep the AIM client running, my bet is that many people would still use it. I personally don't care about the ads anymore. Sure they're annoying, but this stuff has to be paid for somehow!! If I don't want ads that badly, I'll find a way to pay for the product without them.
I don't know if I'd go that far. However, I do back up that it saves system resources (that was one of the first reasons I changed -- each client took up about 10mb of ram, and it really started to bug me, technically could have bought more, but throwing more memory at a problem doesn't always solve it, it may temporarily, but inefficient memory use is inefficient memory use).
I'm wondering if there could be some middle ground for them. AOL would possibly allow them to use the protocol in exchange for showing the ads, or for a small fee for every user that actually uses their services. That way, AOL can have the income that used to be generated, and Trillian can have the interoperability that makes it so great.
You may say that I'm a dreamer... but hopefully I'm not the only one. :-)
marc
There are actually a few online (no snide comments needed, I already realize how worthless all of this information is), though my personal favorite would be the morphology tool provided by the perseus project at Tufts.
I'm such a geek... :-)
marcYou never know when people are going to bust out with the old latin forms.
;-)
For instance, I've been known to say, "Sometimes, the side effects viri are very detrimental to productivity", I dont' even catch myself until someone points it out!!
marc
agreed... next to go, all those with vaguely Latin sounding names :-)
you are correct, it is not from "vir, viri", but rather from "virus,i(n)" which basically comes out to mean "poison, slime, virus"
Actually, "viri" is a proper form for a few different things...
from vir, viri (n) it is the nominative plural, genative singular
from virus, i (n) it is the genative singular..
"virii", however, is incorrect in both Latin and in English
I think I pointed this out in one of your previous posts.... "vir" is a latin word meaning "man", but "virus" is a latin word meaning "poison, virus, slime". However, it has some special rules so that "viri" is only its genative singular and not its nominative plural like people want to use it...
Actually, there is no nominative plural of the word "virus". There are a few latin words that are that way, and this happens to be one of them ("viri" is however, the genative singular).
Well, technically, the OS and the device have already been separated a little bit. I can think of two different companies that use the PalmOS. Handspring and Symbol both use the PalmOS on their devices, and both of them have their own version of the operating system in order to support some of their added features. However, the strict PalmOS doesn't have these features integrated, so in order to get them you have to buy those devices.
Thus, what you have some is some forked versions of the same operating system (sound familiar?). With the Operating System division separated from the device division, it seems to me as if there is a greater chance for those features developed on other platforms to be integrated into the main OS.
Then, instead of having 3 separate versions of the OS implemented different features. You would have one version of the OS, implementing the whole featureset. Palm can then license out the whole OS to many different companies who have their own personal needs, and the developers for each of these different platforms will have one OS to develop for rather than 3 fragmented versions of the OS.
Hence, Palm is making a bigger play into the OS buisiness than they did before. By doing this, they are not only reaching out to customers to license from them (which they already have), they are reaching out to developers who now only have to track one line of the Operating System rather than trying to merge 3 separate Operating Systems which are almost but not completely unlike each other.
Well, there is the fact that they wrote a good portion of evolution, which is open source. So, in that sense they have quite a bit to do with open source, as they have written something that will give their users much of the functionality of Outlook, with the benefits of open source and hopefully a lack of all the security holes. Then everyone gets mad at them for not being completely and totally open source when the offer to sell a proprietary version of their connector in order to put some food on the table.
Personally, I think this is a great thing. The developers at Ximian have produced a product that is very usefull to very many people, and they have done it through the open source model. However, as has been shown by many open source companies deaths, pure open source does not always pay the bills. Thus they have come up with a fairly impressive way to fund their open source project. They get the corporate people and those who really want the functionality of connecting with MS exchange to pay an extra price to keep Ximian going.
I personally think that this is to be lauded rather than condemned. I would have much preferred to have the connector open source, as I would love to ditch windows in favor of linux for the use of exchange. However, I can see the need that they have as well...
I see two things happening because of this... the first, someone is going to start writing an open source version of the Ximian connector, which will force Ximian to either stay on top of things and keep making theirs better, or to open source theirs and find another way to get some money. The second, is that Ximian will come up with some version of incremental releases (or a license system much like Ghostscript), which would provide revenue from corporate sources and then release the source code for others to enjoy.
Then again, I might just be dreaming....
marc
I think that the reason that this case was thrown out so quickly is that nothing has happened yet. There has been no case proven where someone has published and gotten sued over it yet, so there has been no real constitutional question at hand.
I think the most important bit of information contained in the press release is right here:
What I see in this (and it is important to say here that I am not a lawyer) is that there has been no proven conflict as of yet. If the RIAA is denying the threat, then the EFF needs to prove that the threat actually happened. Once they have proved that the threat actually happened, then we actually have ourselves a constitutional question at hand. As it stands right now, there is a supposed constitutional question at hand.
I personally predict that the next appeal will get the much the same result, until one professor stands up and either stands the RIAA down (in which case they will win de facto and things will start to get published as people get braver), or actually goes to court to battle this out the way it should be battled out.
Once there is a proven case of free speech being suppressed on account of the DMCA, then you will see the courts actually start to step in and stop the madness (unfortunately, this will probably take quite some time).
marc
If you made that comment tongue-in-cheek, then I will laugh along with your great joke. That statement is quite accurate... however, you really can't say that it is easy overall. Debian is usually not aimed at your average, ordinary, everyday (my apologies to Mr. Walsh) computer users who don't understand the fact that sometimes you need to delve into your computer with a flashlight so that you can figure out what the actual chipset is on your old generic network card. Personally, I didn't see _that_ much of a problem with doing that, but your average computer user is going to disagree quite a bit.
Again, I think that entering in your hardware isn't the best solution. It will work in a pinch (aka, as a last resort), but you can do so much more to detect what is going on (as has been demonstrated on many platforms). However, there are always going to be those cards and devices that you just can't detect, as they didn't include anything that allows you to detect them!!! So, you can win some of the time, but you can't win all of the time.
Actually, its a bit more complicated than that.
The real reason that the Romans wanted Egypt was because of food. As the Republic was begining to fall, politians began to promise the Roman citizens food at a fixed price, which was lowered and lowered until it became free. In order to keep up with this demand, the Romans had to figure out a place to get this food from (they sure as hell weren't going to be able to feed all of the citizens of Rome without some good source of food). In the earlier years they started to use Sicily to produce the massive amounts of food needed to feed the city of Rome, but that had only so much ability to produce.
Coincidentally, Egypt had the Nile River running right through it. The Nile river valley was (and still is) some of the most productive land in the world (I used to have some statistics on how much more productive, I seem to recall a number of around 10 times more, but I can't recall exactly) and thus produced a crapload of excess food which the Egyptians had to use as trade bait, but which Rome saw being much safer in their hands (hungry and desperate citizens mean trouble).
Basically, Egypt was so important to the Romans that it never became a true province (at least around this time), it became the personal estate of the emperor so that he could administer it properly to have the food transported to Rome so that there wouldn't be huge riots.