The tax idea doesn't make sense. It's not likely to happen. Corn is already subsidized and used to sweeten soda.
The idea that discouraging people from drinking diet soda is going to stop them from binging on a box of chips ahoy or fig newtons is stupid. Does soda stimulate the appetite? The miniscule amount of caffeine would suppress the appetite, if anything, and the liquid in the stomach would make you full sooner. Is not drinking soda gonna stop people from eating twinkies or a bag of doritos? No.
Flat taxes put more burden on the lower classes. The majority of us can afford whatever stupid tax they decide to levy; I feel bad for the poor people who are already having a hard time scraping together enough for food, clothing, gas and rent. The rest of us will have to listen to their kids whining at the store because they can't have soda due to some stupid tax they can't afford.
Whether or not you can afford another tax, it's not going to happen and it wouldn't help with anything except raising tax revenue.
I can't imagine a scenario when I would chose to use MySQL (or MS SQL, for that matter).
I work for a Fortune 500 company. We use MySQL with J2EE and Hibernate in a production environment. Postgres would be our fall-back option if MySQL ever stopped doing the trick for us, but it scales well to thousands of users.
MySQL can easily be configured for use as a production-quality database. We also use Oracle and DB2 on an i5 for certain purposes, but our biggest app (in terms of company scope and $$) employs MySQL in the back-end.
Unless its virus defenses have been upgraded, I'll have a hard time recommending Windows 7 to the people getting new computers.
The US computer market is saturated right now; there are almost 0 "first time buyers". As a generalization, the only people who are getting their first computer are the elderly and a few middle-aged people. Even with virus protection, spyware protection, and a firewall, the last two people in my life who bought PCs needed a "quick restore" due to viruses or worms. This is unacceptable.
I use Linux, but it's not for everyone -- I understand this -- and many fixed-income customers don't want to shell out the extra money for a Mac -- or perhaps they feel the "cool" thing is not for them. The elderly I've talked to aren't sold on "trendy" things; they tend to think they're impractical.
"Home" version of Windows would be better off if their security were indeed targeted towards the general public. They could ship Windows 7 with no open ports, like the default Ubuntu install. They could rebuild IE with security in mind; it needs a complete overhaul. It seems like these two "improvements" would prevent many headaches. I remember plugging my Windows XP computer in at college; within 7 seconds, I had the sasser worm and skynet (or whatever it was called). There's no reason for that sort of worm infection to be prevalent nowadays.
Business versions could have services running with open ports... corporate security can deal with that. Home PC users shouldn't have to suffer the wrath of 1000 vulnerabilities just so system administrators can use home versions in a corporate setting.
It's also interesting sociologically and psychologically, in that it represents of what happens when an irresistible force of scientific evidence meets the immovable object of faith.
We can test this scientifically. What happens when the Juggernaut (can't be stopped) charges into the Blob (can't be moved)?
I have to disagree. The problem here isn't the banks; it's the patent system.
Patents were designed to help people with new, nontrivial ideas (or new nontrivial ways of doing things that provided some great benefit) protect their investments. They were primarily used for mechanical processes. Unfortunately, when America went from being an industrial nation to a service-oriented one, the rules about patents were perverted into our current catastrophic state. They're more of a legal weapon now than they are a means to secure the fruits of labor.
There once was a time when the scientific masses used patents as a way to ensure their research would pay off. Modern parents are usually loopholes or technicalities discovered by legal teams; the businesses and the lawyers get rich; the companies that would benefit from the ability to use such technologies to help the economy progress and make the lives of the average Joe easier end up at the short end of the stick.
Really, patents are about greed and hindering technological progress. They discourage innovation by providing an instant monopoly on technology.
I don't see why this is so funny. Opera's not that bad, and it does offer some things that aren't available by default in Firefox. Sure, it doesn't have the 400 extensions that FF does, but you don't have to screw around with it much. Opera has some really nifty features enabled OOTB that most people would overlook otherwise. It's also fast and it does a really good job with adhering to web standards.
Yours is really a flamebait comment, and if there were a considerable number of Opera users with moderation points out there, I'm sure they'd overlook objectivity and mod you down.
The problem is that without one, you can't afford the other. There are technologies developed in the 90's that you can't afford yet because of legitimate patents. With even a single other player in the market, the better stuff becomes affordable. With one vendor, your only choice is between buying from that vendor and not having their product, no matter what the cost is.
I'm simply not naive enough to believe that you can have the good products without healthy competition. If your product is "good enough" for consumers and you're the only supplier, where's your motivation to innovate or improve?
MSFT has done an amazing job of locking people in. PC Gaming is predominantly a Direct X-driven industry. Take a look at Halo. People are going to stick w/ Windows instead of OS X or Linux as long as MS dominates the gaming world.
People stick with what they're used to. Wine helps with gaming in OS X and Linux, but it's not going to challenge MSFT's dominance.
Do you want to challenge their dominance? Give a PS3 or a Wii as a gift... or even an Xbox 360. Put an end to Windows gaming. Install a copy of OpenOffice.org instead of that evaluation copy of MS Office that comes with their new computer.
Are you sick of providing tech support to your relatives? Show them what it's like to be virus- and spyware-free with OS X or Linux. Let them run Vista and Ubuntu (or whatever distro you like) side-by-side on the same hardware and let them decide for themselves which one better suits their needs.
I can honestly say that I've had a lot of luck. My parents, my little brother, my fiancee and her father all run Ubuntu now. We use CUPS to print documents from our laptops and it never fails. We mount remote file shares easily and spend countless hours playing Battle for Wesnoth, Runescape, etc.
I don't care if you're a Mac or a Linux person... get people to use something other than Windows... anything else will do.
I agree that Mac OS X, the Mac platform, and all of the bundled software kick a lot of ass.
But... monolithic kernels aren't the answer? Have you ever heard of Linux? BSD? Solaris? Windows... anything?? Mac OS X?
Hybrid kernels are technically monolithic; they are not minimal in any way, and despite the fact that system services are modular, they are run in kernel space; crashing a service can bring down the entire system. Services in a microkernel-based OS run in user space; they can often be swapped out if they crash. The fact that Windows makes excessive use of RPC doesn't make it a microkernel.
Did you mean, "Everyone uses a monolithic kernel and MS and Apple like to try to soak up the market that really should belong to AIX?" Microkernels have their place... if you're hosting a commercial web site on Blade or i5 servers, I highly recommend against using anything but AIX. The scalability and stability are second to none.
... unless you'd have to pay $100 each way to take a taxi to and from work every day, and with no other form transportation available, find driving is the only reasonable way to get to work.
There are only two ways for me to get to work... they're both highways and they're both constantly congested. Even if you put a $10 toll on both roads, going a different route wouldn't make sense.
If I had to guess, I'd say that MS probably offers incentives to companies to *not* have them install another browser or media player, or it might be in their OEM/vendor agreement (which would be a pretty clear exploit of monopoly, IMHO). Otherwise, we surely would have seen another browser installed by default by now.
I've never seen a Windows-based computer come with more a non-MS browser or non-MS media player... unless you count preinstalled AOL.
They really should look into this issue. Switching to a license is one thing; being bound to a license is another.
It'd be nice to having mandatory submission under specific terms that allowed a voting body to decide on the license the code would be released under, so that if at some point the majority of the contributors wanted to migrate to v3, they could migrate all of the code instead of only their own portions. Unfortunately, establishing something like that would require all submitters of code to approve, and surely that'd be a big investment and probably impossible.
The GPLv2 is a very fitting license for Linus' intentions, but who's to say that something more fitting won't be drafted in the future? This is a small cause for concern.
I've performed this service for four people. Their computers came with Vista; I have a pre-activation copy of XP (XP Home, unfortunately) with all of the SPs bundled in manually. It's certainly not a legit, but it does get rid of Vista. Since all of the computers came with XP or Vista anyways, they've already paid for Windows.
Many people simply get no benefits from using Vista. It uses more RAM and takes forever to boot (the most common complaint I hear), and "the interface is obnoxious" even after disabling UAC (which gets rid of a bit of security). When they bought Vista, many people were hoping for a better XP.
I can't be counted among the XP users; I'm running Ubuntu. However, XP is a very good OS. There are some programs that don't run in Wine, but enough of them do for me to get by. When I build computers, they're installed with Ubuntu. For laptops, it makes the most sense to find a good deal on one and then wipe the drive. For everyone else, there's pre-activation XP w/ SP2, which has passed Windows Genuine Advantage every time, AFAIK.
The following was my programming sequence in college: 2 Java courses, 1 C++ course, 1 assembly, 1 C/C++. Google has contacted me three times, asking me if I'd seriously consider a job opportunity with them. I may not be hired by them yet, but my resume is attracting some attention and my work experience commands an upper-class salary in a small southern city in the US... less than two years after graduation. My resume doesn't mention ANY work in C/C++,.NET, or anything like that... just Java.
EVERY JOB I've had has been J2EE-related. Most corporations are looking at web-based solutions, whether it's J2EE,.NET, Ruby, Groovy (Java-based), etc. The two things I would've liked to had exposure to in college were Oracle and SQL, which are unlikely to be replaced any time soon.
In response to the three main points of the article: 1. Not many computer scientists leave college to work at a math-related job, especially not one that relies heavily on calculus or set theory. Set theory is more applicable for research in computational complexity. Most of us are headed out to develop the software of today and tomorrow. 2. Learning to use existing software is an incredibly useful skill set. 95% of programming needs are met by pre-existing software. I've ALWAYS needed Apache Tomcat, JDBC, and Spring/Hibernate at work. The odds that I'll be cooking up such a package myself are pretty low. 3. Safety and security are primarily about design and development. In the case of design, good techniques can be taught in ANY language. When it comes to development, you're best off having a code security team work on that; not every programmer is cut out to be a debugger. It takes a special knack to break security.
It's been shown that reformed criminals make the best cops: they know all the tricks. If you want to learn about security, hire a hacker. It takes drive and quirkiness to do a job like that (and skills like reverse engineering, often via black box testing, etc.)
Why should be care if Apple takes market share away from Linux, as long as Linux is growing and MS share on the desktop is decreasing? It would be selfish to press for more Linux desktops at the expense of Apple. Every time someone runs a non-Windows operating system, the demand for software on that platform increases. As people diversify operating systems, portability becomes a factor (since the Windows platform becomes less profitable); more software will be written to run on multiple platforms, viruses will lose their potency. I don't remove malware from computers for a living, so I'm cool with people changing from Windows.
We'll see a browser-independent web. We'll have commercial non-Id games for Linux and more games for Macs. Some people even run Linux on their Mac. There are too many benefits of people buying Macs for me to complain. They're all doing me a favor.
Just stop the MS monopoly, please. I don't care if you're running BSD or MINIX or some home-brewed BeOS.
The one thing that needs to come of all of this is that the tools made have to be usable in a commercial setting. I'm all about free as in beer stuff, but freedom (for companies) is the more important factor here. For some reason (and I think it has to do w/ Microsoft's SDK), many companies have chosen to use Direct X, which is a huge hindrance to cross-platform gaming; those companies and their developers will likely continue to use Direct X. Convincing them to use OpenGL and SDL is a must.
A license like the LGPL would be nice; if the software isn't usable without companies having to open up their entire game (i.e., give everything away for free), where's the incentive to develop games for Linux? (I'm writing this while waiting for my turn in Battle for Wesnoth).
To expound on how correct you are, we're not really looking for alternative fuels in the US. It's sad; Europe (as a whole) is a much more agile entity than we are. For some reason, a dozen countries are making economic and social progress faster than a single one that has been an economic powerhouse for the past couple hundred years.
If gasoline were a more appropriate price (e.g., $6/gal), we'd see alternatives popping up. Europe has been paying that much for gas for several years now. At this rate, the US will continue to produce/consume SUV's and trucks until gasoline becomes so expensive that it makes economic sense to switch over to something else. That aside, the US gov't is promoting patent law bullshit instead of realizing that it hinders our economic progress and ties up our courts, just like the war on drugs.
The incentives for the US to stop sucking eggs aren't in place. It feels like there's nothing we can do to stop idiots like Ted Stevens from getting elected. Congress doesn't enact laws that are in our best interests and the president's a moron.
I changed my mind about wanting to live in the US in 2007. It seems worth seriously considering a move to another country or even another continent. I'm thinking about vacationing in London. Canada and the UK don't seem like bad ideas right now. There's more wrong with this country than its president.
A person claiming responsibility for some of the XO's innovations has left the OLPC in order to be compensated for her inventions. I don't see the problem with this. The power consumption technologies are amazing; hard drives, processors, and displays all consume a lot of power.
My laptop only runs about 40 minutes at full bore (i.e., if I disable all of the power saving features). There is much work to be done in this area. I'd like to see a huge transition from HDD to solid state disks (i.e., 2.5" and 3.5" flash-like drives), as well as from CISC to RISC processors, especially for servers running on the x86 architecture. The former is probably more likely. HDD pales in comparison to SSD for reliability, performance, and power consumption. We already have small devices that run on flash memory; why can't we use similar technology for laptops in the future?
The groundwork is already in place: Top OEMs are beginning to install alternate OSs on their machines. If Google has their way, most computing will eventually be done using thin clients; at that point, the internet and computing will become ubiquitous, and MS will no longer be a factor.
The main reason people use Windows is because other operating systems don't meet their needs. It's mainly a software thing, such as is the case for PC gaming (which is still ahead of consoles, but not by as much as in the past). Wine is a helpful product in that it eases the transition for many people, but it's not a complete replacement for Windows yet.
Since things like a suitable alternative for Photoshop (e.g., super GIMP) and a fully-featured Wine aren't going to appear over night, it'll be a long time before MS becomes irrelevant... unless computing moves online. Most business software is either written for Linux already (e.g., development IDEs) or can be COMPLETELY replaced by a combination of FOSS (e.g. Outlook -> Evolution). I replaced my Windows workstation with a Linux workstation at my last job when I became fed up with the task scheduling and constant SSHing in Windows (I had to work on Unix systems anyways).
People are leaving Windows. It's a very slow but consistent process. Every piece of commercial software developed for Linux is a blow to MS. Every computer running Mac OS X is a blow to MS. A lot of little things will bring down MS; it's inevitable. Google, though not a direct competitor, is a huge point of leverage.
Don't think Google's going to come out with Google OS. That's not in their plans. Their idea is to make the OS an irrelevant piece of software when it comes to doing your everyday computing tasks. MS is going to have to come up with a new strategy if they want to cease the antitrust legislation against them.
There's an unstable kernel? I've never, ever had my kernel crash or spinlock or anything like that. Once in a great while, my ATI kernel module craps out, but that's about it (I assumed that risk when I installed crappy proprietary drivers from a company that formerly didn't care about it's Linux-using patrons).
If you're really unhappy w/ the Linux kernel, maybe you should try an OS with a microkernel (e.g., MINIX), or something like BSD if you're not happy with microkernels.
I'll be looking forward to running Linux on my Wii... to get around paying $5 for Opera!!! Sheesh, I have a laptop; I'm not going to pay $5 to browse the web with a Wiimote when I can do it w/ a keyboard and mouse.
GCC was ported to the PowerPC ISA long ago, so I don't see why it wouldn't be possible. What impressed me was that someone got Linux to run on the cell processor in the PS3.
FOSS doesn't spur creativity because FOSS isn't inherently creative. HUMAN BEINGS ARE CREATIVE. software is written by people. Knowledge-sharing is natural. Being secretive about knowledge implies that you want leverage over others.
FTA: "So Richard hatched a plan. [...] He would instigate a free version of an ascendant, if rather dull, program: the Unix operating system. That simple act would blast apart the idea that lawyers and companies could control software culture. Eventually a kid named Linus Torvalds followed in Richard's footsteps and did something related [...]. His effort yielded Linux, the basis for a vastly expanded open-software movement."
I have a lot of questions about this quote: What is dull about Unix? Is the author so ignorant that he really believe Linus was following in Stallman's footsteps, rather than challenging Andrew Tanenbaum's MINIX microkernel design? There are some pretty fundamental differences between the philosophies of Stallman and Torvalds in regards to FOSS, the GPL, etc. For example, the Hurd kernel is (or will be) a microkernel, and Linus is keeping Linux under the GPL v2. Almost all modern operating systems are modeled after Unix... GNU/Linux, OS X, AIX, HP UX, MINIX, etc. Why reinvent the wheel?
The author has a lot to his credit; he's a very influential person, coined the term "virtual reality", and has taught at several Ivy League colleges. However, this article makes unsound claims and smells of anger and dejection. It's not worth sending him an email or flaming him, as he encouraged in the article. Let him vent. He's allowed to find FOSS boring. Software like Blender, Firefox, MythTV and Python will hold my attention for a very long time.
The article seems to be lacking in insight. For example, here's a quote attributed to him (from wikipedia.org): "If we start to believe that the Internet itself is an entity that has something to say, we're devaluing those people [creating the content] and making ourselves into idiots."
This is analogous to our belief that books have something to say, which devalues the people who wrote them and make us into idiots. There's nothing dehumanizing about reading what others have written. It's simply a form of communication./. didn't write this comment; a person did. The fact that you obtained the information from my comment by reading this site doesn't devalue me or make you an idiot.
Don't worry about KDE 4.0's availability to Ubuntu users. Either the Ubuntu team (MOTU) will put it in the Universe repository, or the KDE team will put the DEBs in a public repository. Either way, there will be several hundred guides posted on the web on how to install it in Ubuntu. The people who want it will be able to get it easily.
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The tax idea doesn't make sense. It's not likely to happen. Corn is already subsidized and used to sweeten soda.
The idea that discouraging people from drinking diet soda is going to stop them from binging on a box of chips ahoy or fig newtons is stupid. Does soda stimulate the appetite? The miniscule amount of caffeine would suppress the appetite, if anything, and the liquid in the stomach would make you full sooner. Is not drinking soda gonna stop people from eating twinkies or a bag of doritos? No.
Flat taxes put more burden on the lower classes. The majority of us can afford whatever stupid tax they decide to levy; I feel bad for the poor people who are already having a hard time scraping together enough for food, clothing, gas and rent. The rest of us will have to listen to their kids whining at the store because they can't have soda due to some stupid tax they can't afford.
Whether or not you can afford another tax, it's not going to happen and it wouldn't help with anything except raising tax revenue.
I can't imagine a scenario when I would chose to use MySQL (or MS SQL, for that matter).
I work for a Fortune 500 company. We use MySQL with J2EE and Hibernate in a production environment. Postgres would be our fall-back option if MySQL ever stopped doing the trick for us, but it scales well to thousands of users.
MySQL can easily be configured for use as a production-quality database. We also use Oracle and DB2 on an i5 for certain purposes, but our biggest app (in terms of company scope and $$) employs MySQL in the back-end.
That's why :-P
Unless its virus defenses have been upgraded, I'll have a hard time recommending Windows 7 to the people getting new computers.
The US computer market is saturated right now; there are almost 0 "first time buyers". As a generalization, the only people who are getting their first computer are the elderly and a few middle-aged people. Even with virus protection, spyware protection, and a firewall, the last two people in my life who bought PCs needed a "quick restore" due to viruses or worms. This is unacceptable.
I use Linux, but it's not for everyone -- I understand this -- and many fixed-income customers don't want to shell out the extra money for a Mac -- or perhaps they feel the "cool" thing is not for them. The elderly I've talked to aren't sold on "trendy" things; they tend to think they're impractical.
"Home" version of Windows would be better off if their security were indeed targeted towards the general public. They could ship Windows 7 with no open ports, like the default Ubuntu install. They could rebuild IE with security in mind; it needs a complete overhaul. It seems like these two "improvements" would prevent many headaches. I remember plugging my Windows XP computer in at college; within 7 seconds, I had the sasser worm and skynet (or whatever it was called). There's no reason for that sort of worm infection to be prevalent nowadays.
Business versions could have services running with open ports... corporate security can deal with that. Home PC users shouldn't have to suffer the wrath of 1000 vulnerabilities just so system administrators can use home versions in a corporate setting.
I apologize for the unrealistic idealism.
It's also interesting sociologically and psychologically, in that it represents of what happens when an irresistible force of scientific evidence meets the immovable object of faith.
We can test this scientifically. What happens when the Juggernaut (can't be stopped) charges into the Blob (can't be moved)?
Those poor mice.
I have to disagree. The problem here isn't the banks; it's the patent system.
Patents were designed to help people with new, nontrivial ideas (or new nontrivial ways of doing things that provided some great benefit) protect their investments. They were primarily used for mechanical processes. Unfortunately, when America went from being an industrial nation to a service-oriented one, the rules about patents were perverted into our current catastrophic state. They're more of a legal weapon now than they are a means to secure the fruits of labor.
There once was a time when the scientific masses used patents as a way to ensure their research would pay off. Modern parents are usually loopholes or technicalities discovered by legal teams; the businesses and the lawyers get rich; the companies that would benefit from the ability to use such technologies to help the economy progress and make the lives of the average Joe easier end up at the short end of the stick.
Really, patents are about greed and hindering technological progress. They discourage innovation by providing an instant monopoly on technology.
I don't see why this is so funny. Opera's not that bad, and it does offer some things that aren't available by default in Firefox. Sure, it doesn't have the 400 extensions that FF does, but you don't have to screw around with it much. Opera has some really nifty features enabled OOTB that most people would overlook otherwise. It's also fast and it does a really good job with adhering to web standards.
Yours is really a flamebait comment, and if there were a considerable number of Opera users with moderation points out there, I'm sure they'd overlook objectivity and mod you down.
The problem is that without one, you can't afford the other. There are technologies developed in the 90's that you can't afford yet because of legitimate patents. With even a single other player in the market, the better stuff becomes affordable. With one vendor, your only choice is between buying from that vendor and not having their product, no matter what the cost is.
I'm simply not naive enough to believe that you can have the good products without healthy competition. If your product is "good enough" for consumers and you're the only supplier, where's your motivation to innovate or improve?
MSFT has done an amazing job of locking people in. PC Gaming is predominantly a Direct X-driven industry. Take a look at Halo. People are going to stick w/ Windows instead of OS X or Linux as long as MS dominates the gaming world.
People stick with what they're used to. Wine helps with gaming in OS X and Linux, but it's not going to challenge MSFT's dominance.
Do you want to challenge their dominance? Give a PS3 or a Wii as a gift... or even an Xbox 360. Put an end to Windows gaming. Install a copy of OpenOffice.org instead of that evaluation copy of MS Office that comes with their new computer.
Are you sick of providing tech support to your relatives? Show them what it's like to be virus- and spyware-free with OS X or Linux. Let them run Vista and Ubuntu (or whatever distro you like) side-by-side on the same hardware and let them decide for themselves which one better suits their needs.
I can honestly say that I've had a lot of luck. My parents, my little brother, my fiancee and her father all run Ubuntu now. We use CUPS to print documents from our laptops and it never fails. We mount remote file shares easily and spend countless hours playing Battle for Wesnoth, Runescape, etc.
I don't care if you're a Mac or a Linux person... get people to use something other than Windows... anything else will do.
I agree that Mac OS X, the Mac platform, and all of the bundled software kick a lot of ass.
But... monolithic kernels aren't the answer? Have you ever heard of Linux? BSD? Solaris? Windows... anything?? Mac OS X?
Hybrid kernels are technically monolithic; they are not minimal in any way, and despite the fact that system services are modular, they are run in kernel space; crashing a service can bring down the entire system. Services in a microkernel-based OS run in user space; they can often be swapped out if they crash. The fact that Windows makes excessive use of RPC doesn't make it a microkernel.
Did you mean, "Everyone uses a monolithic kernel and MS and Apple like to try to soak up the market that really should belong to AIX?" Microkernels have their place... if you're hosting a commercial web site on Blade or i5 servers, I highly recommend against using anything but AIX. The scalability and stability are second to none.
... unless you'd have to pay $100 each way to take a taxi to and from work every day, and with no other form transportation available, find driving is the only reasonable way to get to work.
There are only two ways for me to get to work... they're both highways and they're both constantly congested. Even if you put a $10 toll on both roads, going a different route wouldn't make sense.
Who has time for that? Just Google for someone that's done a systematic literature review on the same topic.
If I had to guess, I'd say that MS probably offers incentives to companies to *not* have them install another browser or media player, or it might be in their OEM/vendor agreement (which would be a pretty clear exploit of monopoly, IMHO). Otherwise, we surely would have seen another browser installed by default by now.
I've never seen a Windows-based computer come with more a non-MS browser or non-MS media player... unless you count preinstalled AOL.
They really should look into this issue. Switching to a license is one thing; being bound to a license is another.
It'd be nice to having mandatory submission under specific terms that allowed a voting body to decide on the license the code would be released under, so that if at some point the majority of the contributors wanted to migrate to v3, they could migrate all of the code instead of only their own portions. Unfortunately, establishing something like that would require all submitters of code to approve, and surely that'd be a big investment and probably impossible.
The GPLv2 is a very fitting license for Linus' intentions, but who's to say that something more fitting won't be drafted in the future? This is a small cause for concern.
I've performed this service for four people. Their computers came with Vista; I have a pre-activation copy of XP (XP Home, unfortunately) with all of the SPs bundled in manually. It's certainly not a legit, but it does get rid of Vista. Since all of the computers came with XP or Vista anyways, they've already paid for Windows.
Many people simply get no benefits from using Vista. It uses more RAM and takes forever to boot (the most common complaint I hear), and "the interface is obnoxious" even after disabling UAC (which gets rid of a bit of security). When they bought Vista, many people were hoping for a better XP.
I can't be counted among the XP users; I'm running Ubuntu. However, XP is a very good OS. There are some programs that don't run in Wine, but enough of them do for me to get by. When I build computers, they're installed with Ubuntu. For laptops, it makes the most sense to find a good deal on one and then wipe the drive. For everyone else, there's pre-activation XP w/ SP2, which has passed Windows Genuine Advantage every time, AFAIK.
The following was my programming sequence in college: 2 Java courses, 1 C++ course, 1 assembly, 1 C/C++. Google has contacted me three times, asking me if I'd seriously consider a job opportunity with them. I may not be hired by them yet, but my resume is attracting some attention and my work experience commands an upper-class salary in a small southern city in the US... less than two years after graduation. My resume doesn't mention ANY work in C/C++, .NET, or anything like that... just Java.
.NET, Ruby, Groovy (Java-based), etc. The two things I would've liked to had exposure to in college were Oracle and SQL, which are unlikely to be replaced any time soon.
EVERY JOB I've had has been J2EE-related. Most corporations are looking at web-based solutions, whether it's J2EE,
In response to the three main points of the article:
1. Not many computer scientists leave college to work at a math-related job, especially not one that relies heavily on calculus or set theory. Set theory is more applicable for research in computational complexity. Most of us are headed out to develop the software of today and tomorrow.
2. Learning to use existing software is an incredibly useful skill set. 95% of programming needs are met by pre-existing software. I've ALWAYS needed Apache Tomcat, JDBC, and Spring/Hibernate at work. The odds that I'll be cooking up such a package myself are pretty low.
3. Safety and security are primarily about design and development. In the case of design, good techniques can be taught in ANY language. When it comes to development, you're best off having a code security team work on that; not every programmer is cut out to be a debugger. It takes a special knack to break security.
It's been shown that reformed criminals make the best cops: they know all the tricks. If you want to learn about security, hire a hacker. It takes drive and quirkiness to do a job like that (and skills like reverse engineering, often via black box testing, etc.)
Why should be care if Apple takes market share away from Linux, as long as Linux is growing and MS share on the desktop is decreasing? It would be selfish to press for more Linux desktops at the expense of Apple. Every time someone runs a non-Windows operating system, the demand for software on that platform increases. As people diversify operating systems, portability becomes a factor (since the Windows platform becomes less profitable); more software will be written to run on multiple platforms, viruses will lose their potency. I don't remove malware from computers for a living, so I'm cool with people changing from Windows.
We'll see a browser-independent web. We'll have commercial non-Id games for Linux and more games for Macs. Some people even run Linux on their Mac. There are too many benefits of people buying Macs for me to complain. They're all doing me a favor.
Just stop the MS monopoly, please. I don't care if you're running BSD or MINIX or some home-brewed BeOS.
The one thing that needs to come of all of this is that the tools made have to be usable in a commercial setting. I'm all about free as in beer stuff, but freedom (for companies) is the more important factor here. For some reason (and I think it has to do w/ Microsoft's SDK), many companies have chosen to use Direct X, which is a huge hindrance to cross-platform gaming; those companies and their developers will likely continue to use Direct X. Convincing them to use OpenGL and SDL is a must.
A license like the LGPL would be nice; if the software isn't usable without companies having to open up their entire game (i.e., give everything away for free), where's the incentive to develop games for Linux? (I'm writing this while waiting for my turn in Battle for Wesnoth).
To expound on how correct you are, we're not really looking for alternative fuels in the US. It's sad; Europe (as a whole) is a much more agile entity than we are. For some reason, a dozen countries are making economic and social progress faster than a single one that has been an economic powerhouse for the past couple hundred years.
If gasoline were a more appropriate price (e.g., $6/gal), we'd see alternatives popping up. Europe has been paying that much for gas for several years now. At this rate, the US will continue to produce/consume SUV's and trucks until gasoline becomes so expensive that it makes economic sense to switch over to something else. That aside, the US gov't is promoting patent law bullshit instead of realizing that it hinders our economic progress and ties up our courts, just like the war on drugs.
The incentives for the US to stop sucking eggs aren't in place. It feels like there's nothing we can do to stop idiots like Ted Stevens from getting elected. Congress doesn't enact laws that are in our best interests and the president's a moron.
I changed my mind about wanting to live in the US in 2007. It seems worth seriously considering a move to another country or even another continent. I'm thinking about vacationing in London. Canada and the UK don't seem like bad ideas right now. There's more wrong with this country than its president.
A person claiming responsibility for some of the XO's innovations has left the OLPC in order to be compensated for her inventions. I don't see the problem with this. The power consumption technologies are amazing; hard drives, processors, and displays all consume a lot of power.
My laptop only runs about 40 minutes at full bore (i.e., if I disable all of the power saving features). There is much work to be done in this area. I'd like to see a huge transition from HDD to solid state disks (i.e., 2.5" and 3.5" flash-like drives), as well as from CISC to RISC processors, especially for servers running on the x86 architecture. The former is probably more likely. HDD pales in comparison to SSD for reliability, performance, and power consumption. We already have small devices that run on flash memory; why can't we use similar technology for laptops in the future?
The groundwork is already in place: Top OEMs are beginning to install alternate OSs on their machines. If Google has their way, most computing will eventually be done using thin clients; at that point, the internet and computing will become ubiquitous, and MS will no longer be a factor.
The main reason people use Windows is because other operating systems don't meet their needs. It's mainly a software thing, such as is the case for PC gaming (which is still ahead of consoles, but not by as much as in the past). Wine is a helpful product in that it eases the transition for many people, but it's not a complete replacement for Windows yet.
Since things like a suitable alternative for Photoshop (e.g., super GIMP) and a fully-featured Wine aren't going to appear over night, it'll be a long time before MS becomes irrelevant... unless computing moves online. Most business software is either written for Linux already (e.g., development IDEs) or can be COMPLETELY replaced by a combination of FOSS (e.g. Outlook -> Evolution). I replaced my Windows workstation with a Linux workstation at my last job when I became fed up with the task scheduling and constant SSHing in Windows (I had to work on Unix systems anyways).
People are leaving Windows. It's a very slow but consistent process. Every piece of commercial software developed for Linux is a blow to MS. Every computer running Mac OS X is a blow to MS. A lot of little things will bring down MS; it's inevitable. Google, though not a direct competitor, is a huge point of leverage.
Don't think Google's going to come out with Google OS. That's not in their plans. Their idea is to make the OS an irrelevant piece of software when it comes to doing your everyday computing tasks. MS is going to have to come up with a new strategy if they want to cease the antitrust legislation against them.
There's an unstable kernel? I've never, ever had my kernel crash or spinlock or anything like that. Once in a great while, my ATI kernel module craps out, but that's about it (I assumed that risk when I installed crappy proprietary drivers from a company that formerly didn't care about it's Linux-using patrons).
If you're really unhappy w/ the Linux kernel, maybe you should try an OS with a microkernel (e.g., MINIX), or something like BSD if you're not happy with microkernels.
I'll be looking forward to running Linux on my Wii... to get around paying $5 for Opera!!! Sheesh, I have a laptop; I'm not going to pay $5 to browse the web with a Wiimote when I can do it w/ a keyboard and mouse.
GCC was ported to the PowerPC ISA long ago, so I don't see why it wouldn't be possible. What impressed me was that someone got Linux to run on the cell processor in the PS3.
FOSS doesn't spur creativity because FOSS isn't inherently creative. HUMAN BEINGS ARE CREATIVE. software is written by people. Knowledge-sharing is natural. Being secretive about knowledge implies that you want leverage over others.
/. didn't write this comment; a person did. The fact that you obtained the information from my comment by reading this site doesn't devalue me or make you an idiot.
FTA: "So Richard hatched a plan. [...] He would instigate a free version of an ascendant, if rather dull, program: the Unix operating system. That simple act would blast apart the idea that lawyers and companies could control software culture. Eventually a kid named Linus Torvalds followed in Richard's footsteps and did something related [...]. His effort yielded Linux, the basis for a vastly expanded open-software movement."
I have a lot of questions about this quote: What is dull about Unix? Is the author so ignorant that he really believe Linus was following in Stallman's footsteps, rather than challenging Andrew Tanenbaum's MINIX microkernel design? There are some pretty fundamental differences between the philosophies of Stallman and Torvalds in regards to FOSS, the GPL, etc. For example, the Hurd kernel is (or will be) a microkernel, and Linus is keeping Linux under the GPL v2. Almost all modern operating systems are modeled after Unix... GNU/Linux, OS X, AIX, HP UX, MINIX, etc. Why reinvent the wheel?
The author has a lot to his credit; he's a very influential person, coined the term "virtual reality", and has taught at several Ivy League colleges. However, this article makes unsound claims and smells of anger and dejection. It's not worth sending him an email or flaming him, as he encouraged in the article. Let him vent. He's allowed to find FOSS boring. Software like Blender, Firefox, MythTV and Python will hold my attention for a very long time.
The article seems to be lacking in insight. For example, here's a quote attributed to him (from wikipedia.org):
"If we start to believe that the Internet itself is an entity that has something to say, we're devaluing those people [creating the content] and making ourselves into idiots."
This is analogous to our belief that books have something to say, which devalues the people who wrote them and make us into idiots. There's nothing dehumanizing about reading what others have written. It's simply a form of communication.
Don't worry about KDE 4.0's availability to Ubuntu users. Either the Ubuntu team (MOTU) will put it in the Universe repository, or the KDE team will put the DEBs in a public repository. Either way, there will be several hundred guides posted on the web on how to install it in Ubuntu. The people who want it will be able to get it easily.