LOL!!! This Troll shows such talent at writing poetry, he *really* should make a living out of it. Amazing how people hate more work and yet would spend the time and exert the talent to troll Slashdot.
It is the parents' job to teach the children what is appropriate and what is not.
Right on!! I find it really annoying that these days, people are pointing fingers at schools, the education ministry, the Internet, blah blah blah, all just to excuse their poor parenting. Not long ago I heard that they banned certain toys from being sold because apparently some negligent parents' baby fell over the stairs because of it. Gimme a break, if they don't know how to properly watch their kid, they don't deserve to be parents. Pointing fingers at "certain sites" on the Internet, etc., just shows their irresponsibility. If the parents feel it's not appropriate for the kids to be on certain sites on the net, it's their job to educate the kids on what they should/should not do. Blaming it on others and trying to implement an "automatic" way of filtering out stuff is just lazy and irresponsible.
Besides, what is "right" for one family is totally different from another family. Who's to say their ideas of appropriateness should be the standard?? Every family should have their own standards, and the parents should actively be responsible for their kids. Letting their children sit in front of the computer unsupervised while blindly depending on censorship software just shows how irresponsible people are these days. What's the point of being a parent if you don't care about making the effort to raise your kid properly? IMNSHO it's time for parents to wake up and do their job properly, instead of pointing fingers at everybody else, and trying to get away with an "easy" way out like blocking certain sites with (as we all know) less-than-perfect blocking software.
Hmm, good point... if this is true -- that Win2k is a catch-up-to-Linux version of Windows -- then we've won the war, in principle, because the tables have turned.
However, much as I'd like Linux to win over Windows, I don't this claim is 100% true... perhaps in the server market, yes. But Windows will still hold the majority of the desktop market for quite some time to come, as far as I can tell.
Anoter example: it might well be excellent for capturing human faces, which is a tricky £$%£$^%$ to make by hand.
Hmm, i don't know how well this would work, though... because the dips(? depressions?) in the face may not be correctly captured by the camera. Especially if the bottom of the "dip" isn't visible except in one of the camera views. Esp. the part around the eyes and nose -- there are a lot of dips/depressions that are obscured by the cheeks, etc., when viewed from the side, so these features may be mis-reconstructed as flat features since the camera only captures them in the front view.
In fact, if you photograph an opened tin can (with the bottom still there), chances are the model will produce an unopened tin can shape, because only one camera view actually sees into the can; the other views are obscured. Well, this is a contrived example, but still...
Well, maybe there's a way to do it. I'm not sure...
IMHO, the attitude of Linus towards the benchmarks shows a certain quality he has, that could very well be one of the major reasons Linux is so successful. Unlike many kneejerk-reaction slashdotters, he actually takes criticism in a positive way, and works to improve his product, rather than throwing up his hands and crying "foul".
This quality of Linus' should be something we as open source software supporters should learn from. The open source community would benefit so much from having people who do not react to criticism by protesting and flaming, but actually doing something to improve their product.
OK, at the risk of being flame-bait... may I point this out: has it ever occurred to you that Jesse Berst might have gone through a "conversion"? Is it so inconceivable for a person to believe in popular FUD against Linux and to speak out his belief? Is it so inconceivable that this same person may have found out eventually that there is more to Linux than the FUD would have people believe? You have to realize that reporters usually do NOT have the means nor the time to do a 100% accurate research about their subject. They go by what they judge to be an accurate picture based on the majority of information they collect -- if this majority happens to be tainted with FUD, it should not be surprising that their views show this too.
But after 5 months, if the reporter is worth his salt at all, he'd have dug deeper and perhaps discovered that Linux really isn't what the FUD depicts it as, and that there is a glimmer of truth to the claims made by Linux supporters.
I hate to say this, but Slashdot seems to be home to a lot of paranoid people who believes that popular media is a Big Satan that is totally clueless and always inaccurate. While it *might* be true that popular media is usually inaccurate, that doesn't justify the conclusion that *anything* from the media is not reliable. So please, people, before flaming this article to death, let's do some research and let's show some hard evidence of why this article is so lousy, as it's claimed to be. Pointing fingers at a reporter's reputation is not sufficient grounds to dismiss an article.
At the risk of being moderated down, I'd like to know if IBM will open-source their contributions to Linux. Yes, this sounds like zealotry, but it's not. We must remember that it's not Linux itself that matters; it's the open source philosophy behind it that matters. Even if IBM manages to leverage Linux into the desktop market successfully, if the contributions are not returned to the open source community, this will only hurt us in the long run.
Although I must say, it's really good to see Big Blue contributing to Linux!:-)
Finally, just to play the Devil's Advocate, I think problems could arise if say, a binary in a distrubtion is infected, and then is sold to thousands of unsuspecting end users. All it would then take is to run that binary as root, and you suddenly have an infection on your hands. However, I don't see this as a very likely scenario, since I can count the number of Linux-based viruses which I have heard of on one hand. For the reasons I outlined above, Linux just isn't a very attractive platform to virus writers, who want to see their creations spread.
It's not attractive to virus writers? What if they are more interested in doing something malicious rather than merely in their virii spreading themselves?
Although it is true that Linux (and Unices in general) tend to give less motivations for virus writers, do not take this as security, because it's not. Even if a virus cannot gain root access, to a home PC user, deleting his entire home directory is just as bad as infecting/bin/ls. I think Linuxers should wake up and realize that as Linux becomes more popular, there will be an increasing temptation to virus writers. And the "it's hard to gain root access" argument is a fallacy. Valuable personal data can be destroyed very easily by a virus, even if the system itself is not harmed. After all, who cares about the system? Which is more important -- the system, or the data that you use the system for? And how about DoS attacks? Even if the virus cannot reach your data, ever heard of fork( ) bombs? Or HD space hoggers that cause you to be unable save your latest document? The system may be less vulnerable, but your data isn't.
Well, I was referring specifically to Corel Linux.
But yeah, their past (and current) support of Wine, etc., seem pretty much in line with Cowpland's attitude in this interview. This is a good sign, IMHO.
I've seen concerns on the Debian mailing lists that Corel is simply trying to raise stock price by jumping on the Linux bandwagon and isn't really contributing anything back to the community.
Well, I'm glad that at least Cowpland justified their position by saying that they are focusing on the "newbie" market. OSS Purists probably thinks that anything less than source-level contribution doesn't count, but I'd like to say this: I'm also a hardcore OSS advocate, but this is the real world. In the real world, sharing source code isn't enough; in order for Linux to continue to expand beyond where it is now, it must reach audiences other than coders and OSS advocates -- it must reach people who may not have the skills to contribute at source-level. I think Corel is taking a good step in that direction: catering for inexperienced desktop PC users and yet backed up by the superior quality of Debian. Although the contribution of Corel may not be apparent now (ie. we don't get that much in terms of source-level contribution), years down the road we might very well be thankful that companies like Corel did what they're doing now. If not for them, Linux could potentially be forever unable to penetrate the desktop market.
I know some people would argue by saying "forget the newbie lusers, Linux is not intended for the masses." From an idealist point of view, this is true... but that doesn't justify not *trying* to make Linux usable by the average Joe person. Who knows, what if it works out well? Then the cause of Linux and OSS will be advanced much further.
Hmm, let's take documentation as a typical "unglamorous" undertaking. Following your argument, the developers probably don't have that much interest in spending the time to write the documentation for that last obscure widget somewhere in there. But the beauty of OSS is that if that documentation is necessary, *somebody* will probably get the itch to add it in.
Sure, most users will probably have no idea how that undocumented widget/feature works, but eventually somebody will, and will contribute. Contrast this with a commercial environment, where because of upper-level pressure *some* documentation will be written, but not necessarily good documentation -- and in general, for somebody to contribute to the quality of documentation is rather hard, esp. if you're not allowed to check the source code. For an OSS project, even if the existing docs are poor, *somebody* who badly needs the docs will eventually get frustrated with the poor quality of the docs and figure it out from the source code. Then he will contribute higher-quality docs to the project. Also, some people just feel that by writing docs they're helping out the community, so this in itself could become a "glamor" factor that motivates people to contribute to the usually "less glamorous" tasks. Money isn't the only motivation for developing software, and this could also apply to writing docs. (Although it is true that in general, writing docs has much less "glamor" factor in it.)
Of course, this argument only works if there are enough users of the software out there that there will be someone who has the skills to contribute, and finds the need to contribute. It will certainly be interesting to see how this turns out.
Hmm, this raises an interesting thought: Would Crusoe eventually replace other architectures? Since it can simply run different Code Morphing software to emulate every existing architecture out there, why can't we code directly for Crusoe's native instruction set?? We don't need other architectures at all...
I understand that one advantage of *not* coding directly in the native instruction set is that Transmeta can totally revamp the instruction set and simply release a new Code Morphing software... but still, while a particular release lasts, why not take advantage of it?
Taking this further, Transmeta *could* release a "static" external instruction set that the Code Morphing software translates into whatever the current native set is. Then we don't need other architectures *at all*. All we need is to use this static external instruction set. We don't even have to worry about being compatible with future releases of Transmeta, since the Code Morphing software takes care of that.
To conclude... WoW! I think Transmeta could be hitting something real big here... congrats!
No, the EM radiation is infrared, not X-ray. Energy from the Big Bang has dissipated so much that infrared is the only thing left of it. Any radiation with higher frequency (eg. X-rays here) must certainly come from objects like stars, quasars, black holes, and the like. This does not affect the Big Bang theory at all.
Second, forcing communication between the components of MS may force the API to be treated as a standard rather than a weapon against competitors. More of its details may leak or even be made open as well.
It would seem to me that this opening up of API's will encourage competition, even if not at the OS level. Ideally, of course, we would like to have OS competition at the level of Linux/freeBSD vs. Windows, for example. But it won't be bad to have an alternative Win32 implementation based on the opened API (WINE comes to mind).
IMHO this is more than merely a "mild" advantage. The opening up of the API's will cause (currently) MS products to lose the monopolistic edge of knowing the internal, "undocumented" API of Windows, thus opening up the market to fair competition. Perhaps more competitors to MS Office or IE. Remember, once IE is decoupled from Windows, "all hell breaks loose" (at least from M$'s point of view) -- we can *finally* have alternative browsers that actually stand a chance of competing with IE. At the very least, even if competitors don't attain to the same level of market saturation, this will still force IE to be pretty high-quality in order not to lose to its competition. Maybe people here prefer a totally non-Windows alternative to things, but you have to admit that opening up fair competition in this way is good for the market, whether or not things go the way we'd like it.
I couldn't get to the article (seems the site got slashdotted)... but anyway, I think any attempt to characterize "coders" or "hackers" in general will fail miserably. There is no single stereotype that fits everybody. In fact, there may not even be a single set of vague guidelines that vaguely fits everybody. This is because people are so vastly different, that just about the *only* way you can characterize them is by the fact that they write code.
Attempting to "relate" to coders attributes other than the fact that they write code is just futile. In general, attempting to relate to [X] attributes other than the fact that they [do what [X] people do] is just as futile. (Unless [X] happens to be trivial.)
I just find it so ironic that people nowadays keep talking about the "badness" of stereotypical ideas about group [X] of people, and yet they keep coming up with more, untrue, stereotypes themselves.
Sounds like this was a filler to make it a list of 10... but how about more plausible things like... *toothbrushes*?!?! Something people often overlook... something which wasn't always available to mankind!
For those who don't know, the toothbrush was invented by a guy in prison, who got the idea after wiping his teeth with a rag (that's how ppl cleaned their teeth back then), and realized something better could be done about it. Now *that* is innovation.
Inprise is taking a leadership role in the Open-Source movement by releasing the beta version of InterBase 6 under an open-source license. We are taking this bold step because we believe every Linux distribution needs InterBase.
LOL... a "leadership role in the Open-Source movement"? Do they even know what that means, I wonder...:-)
Anyway, jokes aside... I think this is a Very Good Thing. I'd say that Linux needs a lot of database offerings like this. Especially open source offerings that we can work on and improve. Although the Linux version of Oracle is good, its closed-sourced, and AFAIK targeted only for RedHat. (I've had major headaches to make it work for Debian.) An open-source DB would alleviate this headache by allowing easy re-config for a particular distro. But even more importantly, it gives us industrial-quality code to play with. IIRC Interbase used to be quite popular, so there must be some good stuff in there.
While MySQL is nice, it doesn't quite give enough features (though the speed is... amazing). I've not used postgre before, so I can't judge. But regardless, having a lot of DB options in Linux is a very good thing. Especially in convincing upper management to switch to Linux: a lot of ppl probably know about Interbase and at least non-techies can take comfort in the fact that Interbase is a "commercial-quality" product (though for techies that probably means zit).
Hmm, interesting point. With Linux riding the all the hype and penetrating all kinds of markets, I'm beginning to get the feeling that some people are shoe-horning Linux into where something else might be more appropriate (flameshield on...).
Standard disclaimer: I've nothing against Linux, in fact I use it exclusively and I love it... but... although the nice thing about using Linux for embeddables like this is that you get open standards (rather than locked-down markets that MS would love to have), don't you think this is getting a little out of hand?? I don't believe in one-size-fits-all (as can be seen in MS's case). Sure, Linux is flexible, configurable, and all that, but IMNSHO embeddables would do better to have a system *designed* for the task. Why take a PC OS and shoe-horn it into an embeddable??
Now of course, the flip-side is that using Linux means that these devices will have open standards, which is always a good thing... but the argument still holds: what's preventing us from writing an *open source*, dedicated system designed for this task??
I just signed up, and my petition# is only 341. Why so low?? I would've thought there are many more Linux users out there who are aware of the lack of Linux support by manufacturers...
*sigh* Sometimes it's sad to see newbies just jump on the Linux bandwagon because it's the "cool thing" of the moment, but have no idea about the Linux ideals, Open Source, etc. (and not even care if they knew). I wish more of them would take the time to understand the issues behind Linux, Open source, GNU, etc.. Well, I guess perhaps it will always be true that only a smaller subset of users will really understand the real issues, and the rest are just there because of the hype or the popularity.
This is just a random thought... wouldn't it be better if we had more different open-source DBs, each of which has a different strength? MySQL is very efficient and optimized for speed, but like you said, it doesn't have transactions, which makes things tough in situations where you *need* transactions.
Maybe we should have different DBs, all geared for a particular area, eg., speed (mySQL), reliability (Oracle? with the rollback stuff), etc.. Then we'll be able to pick the one that meets our need the most without having a huge DB that is slowed down or bloated because it wants to be all things to all men.
Agreed whole-heartedly!! We *need* different distros. IMHO competition (even non-hostile competition like among the Linux distros) is good. Human beings are lazy, and when there is no motivation to improve something, it just decays. Once the initial itch to hack code wears off, competition is what motivates you to keep going, and what "restores the itch" to hack more and make it better. There is no such thing as one-size-fits-all. There is only one-size-fits-few (as we can see in M$'s case). So why not have many sizes to fit most?
Packages from unstable are actually very usable, just not well-tested "enough" to be released with confidence. I've been using unstable ever since I got Linux on my box, and it has never failed me. Yes sometimes there was the odd dependency bug or broken install, but when you live on the bleeding edge what can you expect? I guess my point is, "unstable" packages are in fact much more stable than the name implies.
Actually, recently there was a lot of discussion on the Debian mailing lists to implement something that would allow the normal user to upgrade to what is currently "unstable" without taking the risk of a newly uploaded package which might break things. Once implemented, sysadmins who must be 100% sure of the stability of their system will use the "stable" branch, while regular users will use what is now "unstable", which is more up to date (but may not be 100% bulletproof, but that doesn't matter to the regular user), and new untested packages will go into an experimental(?) branch which only people who want to *test* new packages will use (ie. they are prepared for any breakages). Once a package is "stable enough" it gets moved to the regular user branch. This way people can stay up-to-date without fearing nasty breakages.
As for releases... remember that Debian's audience is mainly sysadmins. Some of them cannot afford any breakage in their servers -- so to achieve release-quality, Debian must spend more time to ensure everything is 100% (or close enough) bulletproof. "Unstable" is usually stable enough for non-sysadmins.
Agreed. I've been using Debian ever since I switched to Linux, and I've never once regretted it, and I've never considered switching to another distro. One of the things I like about it is that it represents (for me at least) what a Linux distro should be: run by volunteers, with everything kept as open as possible (online bug DB accessible to anyone and everyone, online developers docs, also accessible to all, not just to "registered developers"). I also like the fact that Debian is dedicated to be 100% free.
Philosophical issues aside, I love Debian because it is the most configurable -- you can fine-tune packages at a very fine level, and yet you can still go back to the packaging system if you want to: doing a manual config doesn't cause the packaging system to throw up its hands and say "yikes you did something *manually*, I don't know what to do now, packaging system aborted." Some distros have this problem -- eg. Redhat's Network configurator gets scared when it sees settings not done through it.
Along the same lines, another attractive feature of Debian is that the basic tools are command-line oriented, with *optional* graphical front-ends to them. This is good -- it allows me to choose whether I want a fancy, "easier"-to-use interface, or I want to do some tasks from a shell/Perl script. I don't like it when some config tools in other distros impose a GUI interface on you -- major headache when the X server doesn't configure your card, for example, and it's very difficult to run GUI config tools from a shell/Perl script.
Anyway, my point is, Debian is very attractive to "hacker types" like me, who want total control over everything, and flexibility in what kind of tools I use. Newbies will probably be better off using RedHat (or derivatives, I heard Mandrake is pretty good), but there will always be the hardcore Linuxers who will stick with Debian.
Linux has been made to run on top of a microkernel and one of Hurd's frequently asked questions seems to be if Hurd could be run using Linux as microkernel. The answer doesn't actually say it couldn't.
*Ahem*. It would be unnecessarily slow and inefficient for running Linux on HURD. The whole idea behind a microkernel is to enable a user to run whatever interfaces he'd like for his programs. You can have a POSIX interface and a Win32 (shudder) interface running at the same time if you want. HURD is about flexibility.
Isn't HURD currently being developed to provide a POSIX interface?? If so, why can't you run Linux binaries on it? You won't need to run the Linux kernel on top of HURD. The binaries can probably run native. The only thing you need to do is to replace the dynamic libraries with HURD-compatible versions! (Unless I'm really missing something here???)
And running HURD on top of Linux would be senseless. HURD is just a collection of daemons and interfaces to add a POSIX interface to the Mach microkernel. Besides, the Linux kernel clearly doesn't have the flexibility Mach has.
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LOL!!! This Troll shows such talent at writing poetry, he *really* should make a living out of it. Amazing how people hate more work and yet would spend the time and exert the talent to troll Slashdot.
I'm truly amused.
Right on!! I find it really annoying that these days, people are pointing fingers at schools, the education ministry, the Internet, blah blah blah, all just to excuse their poor parenting. Not long ago I heard that they banned certain toys from being sold because apparently some negligent parents' baby fell over the stairs because of it. Gimme a break, if they don't know how to properly watch their kid, they don't deserve to be parents. Pointing fingers at "certain sites" on the Internet, etc., just shows their irresponsibility. If the parents feel it's not appropriate for the kids to be on certain sites on the net, it's their job to educate the kids on what they should/should not do. Blaming it on others and trying to implement an "automatic" way of filtering out stuff is just lazy and irresponsible.
Besides, what is "right" for one family is totally different from another family. Who's to say their ideas of appropriateness should be the standard?? Every family should have their own standards, and the parents should actively be responsible for their kids. Letting their children sit in front of the computer unsupervised while blindly depending on censorship software just shows how irresponsible people are these days. What's the point of being a parent if you don't care about making the effort to raise your kid properly? IMNSHO it's time for parents to wake up and do their job properly, instead of pointing fingers at everybody else, and trying to get away with an "easy" way out like blocking certain sites with (as we all know) less-than-perfect blocking software.
Hmm, good point... if this is true -- that Win2k is a catch-up-to-Linux version of Windows -- then we've won the war, in principle, because the tables have turned.
However, much as I'd like Linux to win over Windows, I don't this claim is 100% true... perhaps in the server market, yes. But Windows will still hold the majority of the desktop market for quite some time to come, as far as I can tell.
Hmm, i don't know how well this would work, though... because the dips(? depressions?) in the face may not be correctly captured by the camera. Especially if the bottom of the "dip" isn't visible except in one of the camera views. Esp. the part around the eyes and nose -- there are a lot of dips/depressions that are obscured by the cheeks, etc., when viewed from the side, so these features may be mis-reconstructed as flat features since the camera only captures them in the front view.
In fact, if you photograph an opened tin can (with the bottom still there), chances are the model will produce an unopened tin can shape, because only one camera view actually sees into the can; the other views are obscured. Well, this is a contrived example, but still...
Well, maybe there's a way to do it. I'm not sure...
IMHO, the attitude of Linus towards the benchmarks shows a certain quality he has, that could very well be one of the major reasons Linux is so successful. Unlike many kneejerk-reaction slashdotters, he actually takes criticism in a positive way, and works to improve his product, rather than throwing up his hands and crying "foul".
This quality of Linus' should be something we as open source software supporters should learn from. The open source community would benefit so much from having people who do not react to criticism by protesting and flaming, but actually doing something to improve their product.
OK, at the risk of being flame-bait... may I point this out: has it ever occurred to you that Jesse Berst might have gone through a "conversion"? Is it so inconceivable for a person to believe in popular FUD against Linux and to speak out his belief? Is it so inconceivable that this same person may have found out eventually that there is more to Linux than the FUD would have people believe? You have to realize that reporters usually do NOT have the means nor the time to do a 100% accurate research about their subject. They go by what they judge to be an accurate picture based on the majority of information they collect -- if this majority happens to be tainted with FUD, it should not be surprising that their views show this too.
But after 5 months, if the reporter is worth his salt at all, he'd have dug deeper and perhaps discovered that Linux really isn't what the FUD depicts it as, and that there is a glimmer of truth to the claims made by Linux supporters.
I hate to say this, but Slashdot seems to be home to a lot of paranoid people who believes that popular media is a Big Satan that is totally clueless and always inaccurate. While it *might* be true that popular media is usually inaccurate, that doesn't justify the conclusion that *anything* from the media is not reliable. So please, people, before flaming this article to death, let's do some research and let's show some hard evidence of why this article is so lousy, as it's claimed to be. Pointing fingers at a reporter's reputation is not sufficient grounds to dismiss an article.
At the risk of being moderated down, I'd like to know if IBM will open-source their contributions to Linux. Yes, this sounds like zealotry, but it's not. We must remember that it's not Linux itself that matters; it's the open source philosophy behind it that matters. Even if IBM manages to leverage Linux into the desktop market successfully, if the contributions are not returned to the open source community, this will only hurt us in the long run.
Although I must say, it's really good to see Big Blue contributing to Linux! :-)
It's not attractive to virus writers? What if they are more interested in doing something malicious rather than merely in their virii spreading themselves?
Although it is true that Linux (and Unices in general) tend to give less motivations for virus writers, do not take this as security, because it's not. Even if a virus cannot gain root access, to a home PC user, deleting his entire home directory is just as bad as infecting /bin/ls. I think Linuxers should wake up and realize that as Linux becomes more popular, there will be an increasing temptation to virus writers. And the "it's hard to gain root access" argument is a fallacy. Valuable personal data can be destroyed very easily by a virus, even if the system itself is not harmed. After all, who cares about the system? Which is more important -- the system, or the data that you use the system for? And how about DoS attacks? Even if the virus cannot reach your data, ever heard of fork( ) bombs? Or HD space hoggers that cause you to be unable save your latest document? The system may be less vulnerable, but your data isn't.
Well, I was referring specifically to Corel Linux.
But yeah, their past (and current) support of Wine, etc., seem pretty much in line with Cowpland's attitude in this interview. This is a good sign, IMHO.
I've seen concerns on the Debian mailing lists that Corel is simply trying to raise stock price by jumping on the Linux bandwagon and isn't really contributing anything back to the community.
Well, I'm glad that at least Cowpland justified their position by saying that they are focusing on the "newbie" market. OSS Purists probably thinks that anything less than source-level contribution doesn't count, but I'd like to say this: I'm also a hardcore OSS advocate, but this is the real world. In the real world, sharing source code isn't enough; in order for Linux to continue to expand beyond where it is now, it must reach audiences other than coders and OSS advocates -- it must reach people who may not have the skills to contribute at source-level. I think Corel is taking a good step in that direction: catering for inexperienced desktop PC users and yet backed up by the superior quality of Debian. Although the contribution of Corel may not be apparent now (ie. we don't get that much in terms of source-level contribution), years down the road we might very well be thankful that companies like Corel did what they're doing now. If not for them, Linux could potentially be forever unable to penetrate the desktop market.
I know some people would argue by saying "forget the newbie lusers, Linux is not intended for the masses." From an idealist point of view, this is true... but that doesn't justify not *trying* to make Linux usable by the average Joe person. Who knows, what if it works out well? Then the cause of Linux and OSS will be advanced much further.
Hmm, let's take documentation as a typical "unglamorous" undertaking. Following your argument, the developers probably don't have that much interest in spending the time to write the documentation for that last obscure widget somewhere in there. But the beauty of OSS is that if that documentation is necessary, *somebody* will probably get the itch to add it in.
Sure, most users will probably have no idea how that undocumented widget/feature works, but eventually somebody will, and will contribute. Contrast this with a commercial environment, where because of upper-level pressure *some* documentation will be written, but not necessarily good documentation -- and in general, for somebody to contribute to the quality of documentation is rather hard, esp. if you're not allowed to check the source code. For an OSS project, even if the existing docs are poor, *somebody* who badly needs the docs will eventually get frustrated with the poor quality of the docs and figure it out from the source code. Then he will contribute higher-quality docs to the project. Also, some people just feel that by writing docs they're helping out the community, so this in itself could become a "glamor" factor that motivates people to contribute to the usually "less glamorous" tasks. Money isn't the only motivation for developing software, and this could also apply to writing docs. (Although it is true that in general, writing docs has much less "glamor" factor in it.)
Of course, this argument only works if there are enough users of the software out there that there will be someone who has the skills to contribute, and finds the need to contribute. It will certainly be interesting to see how this turns out.
Hmm, this raises an interesting thought: Would Crusoe eventually replace other architectures? Since it can simply run different Code Morphing software to emulate every existing architecture out there, why can't we code directly for Crusoe's native instruction set?? We don't need other architectures at all...
I understand that one advantage of *not* coding directly in the native instruction set is that Transmeta can totally revamp the instruction set and simply release a new Code Morphing software... but still, while a particular release lasts, why not take advantage of it?
Taking this further, Transmeta *could* release a "static" external instruction set that the Code Morphing software translates into whatever the current native set is. Then we don't need other architectures *at all*. All we need is to use this static external instruction set. We don't even have to worry about being compatible with future releases of Transmeta, since the Code Morphing software takes care of that.
To conclude... WoW! I think Transmeta could be hitting something real big here... congrats!
Hmm, maybe Debian maintainers should consider releasing "snapshot" CD's that alleviate this problem.
No, the EM radiation is infrared, not X-ray. Energy from the Big Bang has dissipated so much that infrared is the only thing left of it. Any radiation with higher frequency (eg. X-rays here) must certainly come from objects like stars, quasars, black holes, and the like. This does not affect the Big Bang theory at all.
It would seem to me that this opening up of API's will encourage competition, even if not at the OS level. Ideally, of course, we would like to have OS competition at the level of Linux/freeBSD vs. Windows, for example. But it won't be bad to have an alternative Win32 implementation based on the opened API (WINE comes to mind).
IMHO this is more than merely a "mild" advantage. The opening up of the API's will cause (currently) MS products to lose the monopolistic edge of knowing the internal, "undocumented" API of Windows, thus opening up the market to fair competition. Perhaps more competitors to MS Office or IE. Remember, once IE is decoupled from Windows, "all hell breaks loose" (at least from M$'s point of view) -- we can *finally* have alternative browsers that actually stand a chance of competing with IE. At the very least, even if competitors don't attain to the same level of market saturation, this will still force IE to be pretty high-quality in order not to lose to its competition. Maybe people here prefer a totally non-Windows alternative to things, but you have to admit that opening up fair competition in this way is good for the market, whether or not things go the way we'd like it.
I couldn't get to the article (seems the site got slashdotted)... but anyway, I think any attempt to characterize "coders" or "hackers" in general will fail miserably. There is no single stereotype that fits everybody. In fact, there may not even be a single set of vague guidelines that vaguely fits everybody. This is because people are so vastly different, that just about the *only* way you can characterize them is by the fact that they write code.
Attempting to "relate" to coders attributes other than the fact that they write code is just futile. In general, attempting to relate to [X] attributes other than the fact that they [do what [X] people do] is just as futile. (Unless [X] happens to be trivial.)
I just find it so ironic that people nowadays keep talking about the "badness" of stereotypical ideas about group [X] of people, and yet they keep coming up with more, untrue, stereotypes themselves.
Sounds like this was a filler to make it a list of 10... but how about more plausible things like ... *toothbrushes*?!?! Something people often overlook... something which wasn't always available to mankind!
For those who don't know, the toothbrush was invented by a guy in prison, who got the idea after wiping his teeth with a rag (that's how ppl cleaned their teeth back then), and realized something better could be done about it. Now *that* is innovation.
Just my $0.02.
LOL... a "leadership role in the Open-Source movement"? Do they even know what that means, I wonder... :-)
Anyway, jokes aside... I think this is a Very Good Thing. I'd say that Linux needs a lot of database offerings like this. Especially open source offerings that we can work on and improve. Although the Linux version of Oracle is good, its closed-sourced, and AFAIK targeted only for RedHat. (I've had major headaches to make it work for Debian.) An open-source DB would alleviate this headache by allowing easy re-config for a particular distro. But even more importantly, it gives us industrial-quality code to play with. IIRC Interbase used to be quite popular, so there must be some good stuff in there.
While MySQL is nice, it doesn't quite give enough features (though the speed is... amazing). I've not used postgre before, so I can't judge. But regardless, having a lot of DB options in Linux is a very good thing. Especially in convincing upper management to switch to Linux: a lot of ppl probably know about Interbase and at least non-techies can take comfort in the fact that Interbase is a "commercial-quality" product (though for techies that probably means zit).
Just my $0.02.
Hmm, interesting point. With Linux riding the all the hype and penetrating all kinds of markets, I'm beginning to get the feeling that some people are shoe-horning Linux into where something else might be more appropriate (flameshield on...).
Standard disclaimer: I've nothing against Linux, in fact I use it exclusively and I love it... but... although the nice thing about using Linux for embeddables like this is that you get open standards (rather than locked-down markets that MS would love to have), don't you think this is getting a little out of hand?? I don't believe in one-size-fits-all (as can be seen in MS's case). Sure, Linux is flexible, configurable, and all that, but IMNSHO embeddables would do better to have a system *designed* for the task. Why take a PC OS and shoe-horn it into an embeddable??
Now of course, the flip-side is that using Linux means that these devices will have open standards, which is always a good thing... but the argument still holds: what's preventing us from writing an *open source*, dedicated system designed for this task??
I just signed up, and my petition# is only 341. Why so low?? I would've thought there are many more Linux users out there who are aware of the lack of Linux support by manufacturers...
*sigh* Sometimes it's sad to see newbies just jump on the Linux bandwagon because it's the "cool thing" of the moment, but have no idea about the Linux ideals, Open Source, etc. (and not even care if they knew). I wish more of them would take the time to understand the issues behind Linux, Open source, GNU, etc.. Well, I guess perhaps it will always be true that only a smaller subset of users will really understand the real issues, and the rest are just there because of the hype or the popularity.
This is just a random thought... wouldn't it be better if we had more different open-source DBs, each of which has a different strength? MySQL is very efficient and optimized for speed, but like you said, it doesn't have transactions, which makes things tough in situations where you *need* transactions.
Maybe we should have different DBs, all geared for a particular area, eg., speed (mySQL), reliability (Oracle? with the rollback stuff), etc.. Then we'll be able to pick the one that meets our need the most without having a huge DB that is slowed down or bloated because it wants to be all things to all men.
Agreed whole-heartedly!! We *need* different distros. IMHO competition (even non-hostile competition like among the Linux distros) is good. Human beings are lazy, and when there is no motivation to improve something, it just decays. Once the initial itch to hack code wears off, competition is what motivates you to keep going, and what "restores the itch" to hack more and make it better. There is no such thing as one-size-fits-all. There is only one-size-fits-few (as we can see in M$'s case). So why not have many sizes to fit most?
Packages from unstable are actually very usable, just not well-tested "enough" to be released with confidence. I've been using unstable ever since I got Linux on my box, and it has never failed me. Yes sometimes there was the odd dependency bug or broken install, but when you live on the bleeding edge what can you expect? I guess my point is, "unstable" packages are in fact much more stable than the name implies.
Actually, recently there was a lot of discussion on the Debian mailing lists to implement something that would allow the normal user to upgrade to what is currently "unstable" without taking the risk of a newly uploaded package which might break things. Once implemented, sysadmins who must be 100% sure of the stability of their system will use the "stable" branch, while regular users will use what is now "unstable", which is more up to date (but may not be 100% bulletproof, but that doesn't matter to the regular user), and new untested packages will go into an experimental(?) branch which only people who want to *test* new packages will use (ie. they are prepared for any breakages). Once a package is "stable enough" it gets moved to the regular user branch. This way people can stay up-to-date without fearing nasty breakages.
As for releases... remember that Debian's audience is mainly sysadmins. Some of them cannot afford any breakage in their servers -- so to achieve release-quality, Debian must spend more time to ensure everything is 100% (or close enough) bulletproof. "Unstable" is usually stable enough for non-sysadmins.
Agreed. I've been using Debian ever since I switched to Linux, and I've never once regretted it, and I've never considered switching to another distro. One of the things I like about it is that it represents (for me at least) what a Linux distro should be: run by volunteers, with everything kept as open as possible (online bug DB accessible to anyone and everyone, online developers docs, also accessible to all, not just to "registered developers"). I also like the fact that Debian is dedicated to be 100% free.
Philosophical issues aside, I love Debian because it is the most configurable -- you can fine-tune packages at a very fine level, and yet you can still go back to the packaging system if you want to: doing a manual config doesn't cause the packaging system to throw up its hands and say "yikes you did something *manually*, I don't know what to do now, packaging system aborted." Some distros have this problem -- eg. Redhat's Network configurator gets scared when it sees settings not done through it.
Along the same lines, another attractive feature of Debian is that the basic tools are command-line oriented, with *optional* graphical front-ends to them. This is good -- it allows me to choose whether I want a fancy, "easier"-to-use interface, or I want to do some tasks from a shell/Perl script. I don't like it when some config tools in other distros impose a GUI interface on you -- major headache when the X server doesn't configure your card, for example, and it's very difficult to run GUI config tools from a shell/Perl script.
Anyway, my point is, Debian is very attractive to "hacker types" like me, who want total control over everything, and flexibility in what kind of tools I use. Newbies will probably be better off using RedHat (or derivatives, I heard Mandrake is pretty good), but there will always be the hardcore Linuxers who will stick with Debian.
*Ahem*. It would be unnecessarily slow and inefficient for running Linux on HURD. The whole idea behind a microkernel is to enable a user to run whatever interfaces he'd like for his programs. You can have a POSIX interface and a Win32 (shudder) interface running at the same time if you want. HURD is about flexibility.
Isn't HURD currently being developed to provide a POSIX interface?? If so, why can't you run Linux binaries on it? You won't need to run the Linux kernel on top of HURD. The binaries can probably run native. The only thing you need to do is to replace the dynamic libraries with HURD-compatible versions! (Unless I'm really missing something here???)
And running HURD on top of Linux would be senseless. HURD is just a collection of daemons and interfaces to add a POSIX interface to the Mach microkernel. Besides, the Linux kernel clearly doesn't have the flexibility Mach has.