Just out of curiosity, what other major software vendors are still providing security (or other) hotfixes for platforms two or three generations back? Do Oracle, SAP etc. and other major commercial vendors do the same?
I know Linux does. The 2.0 development cycle has seen work from July 1996 to February 2004. Since the source is open and I'm sure there's some 2.0 folks still around, any security fixes, as rare as they come up in the kernel, could easily be backported.
Companies EOLing stuff after 9 - 10 years scares me. With the notion of pervasive computing and kernels showing up in a wide range of things, the concept of software lasting far longer than we thought is now nothing new. Consider Y2K-affected machines--engineers never thought their products would still be running 30 years later, but somehow, they were.
You'd think that as big a company as Microsoft is, they'd support old crufty stuff ad infinitum to give their own products that lasting aura of strength and integrity. Of course, there's no money to be made in releasing patches for 10 year old stuff, but the simple notion that all customers could have access to them could be a major competitive advantage.
Just think, do you really know when you're going to be replacing that server you've just setup?
How do you suppose two or three hours of warning would help in the task of evacuating 50 to 100 million people? Take, for example, the recent rash of hurricanes in the southeast U.S. Even with days of notice, the interstate highways out of Florida resembled parking lots.
I'd get on a bike, or maybe a four wheel drive vehicle or motorcycle. If I knew I was going to die if I didn't get out of the area in three hours, I'd throw the important stuff (a survival kit, anything with a high value:mass ratio, maybe some photographs and hard drives from machines) in a backpack and just take off. Get to high ground and dodge everybody trying to drive.
I don't have proof because it hasn't happened, but I surmise most people in affected areas would have a disaster-movie mentality of throwing everything but the kitchen sink in the family sedan only to wait around in a 200 mile parking lot. Remember the last scene in Deep Impact--this isn't a spoiler, the movie sucked--where a vast majority of people drowned in a wave while stuck in traffic (how fitting) whereas if they just spent 5 minutes climbing up an adjoining hill they could have survived?
Nowadays, with mass media and Internet hype about to cause the end of the world, now's a probably good time to get yourself a survival kit, a good pair of shoes, a topographic map, instantly removable hard drive enclosure kit, and become acquainted with a treadmill. Even forgoing the last option, spending three hours and a hundred bucks now putting together such a backpack might just save your life in the future.
But Wikipedia's "staff" of volunteers is "better than any full-time staff you could imagine, because there are so many people involved," Sanger says. Any malicious or mistaken entry "is going to be instantly noticed" and corrected.
Bzzt. Wikipedia has a LOT of articles...430000+ in the English version alone, with varying ranges of popularity, of course. Vandalism that happens on some articles will be corrected immediately, vandalism on others could take days to languish. I've seen insidiously biased and incomplete articles that take far longer than an instant to get fixed.
What's more troubling is that people think Wikipedia is an end-all of knowledge. I wish it were, I really do. The problem is, a vandal or somebody just flatout misinformed could easily change some obscure date from like 1342 to 1324 and nobody except an expert could possibly notice and correct. From this we can derive a major problem in Wikipedia: The number of bad edits to good editors can be incredibly disproportionate, and everyone else in between won't usually know the difference.
In a perfect world, we'd seek out that information three times over before using it, and change any wrong edits back, but humans are just naturally lazy and not inquisitive enough when it comes to information on Wikipedia. In some sordid way, Wikipedia really does reflect the sum of all human knowledge. It's just that humans aren't perfect.
When someone uploads a patch to an opensource project, you have a pretty good idea of the effectiveness of that patch--it'll either do what it says, or it won't, if the new source will even compile. Bugs can be found by the sheer number of people using the software, and they're usually a lot more apparent than an unfact on Wikipedia. No information compiler exists, and it doesn't spit out warnings when you've mispelled somebody's name, transposed a digit in their birthyear, or just die when you've got something completely wrong.
I think Wikipedia would do well to perhaps remove editing by anonymous users, or perhaps introduce some sort of moderation system like those discussed elsewhere in the thread. The problem with these solutions is that knowledge is very fleeting--sometimes somebody just won't care long enough to create an account before an edit, or they might be a rare holder of some tidbit of knowledge that can't be verified by a moderator. And who's to say the moderator's correct?
Wikipedia has a vast amount of potential. Their pursuit for freedom in both beer and speech of human knowledge is remarkably admirable, and I consider them one of the best Internet charities around. Regardless of the inherent problems, I will continue to be an editor and support them in other ways as time goes on.
Erm. The same company that devloped Vioxx also devloped Ivermectin (Mectizan), a highly effective treatment plan (once every 12 months) for River blindness, a dehabilitating disease that affects people who can't afford modern medicine. Despite Merck dumping about $290 million into developing the treatment, they give it away for free.
Before you attack Merck with pitchforks and torches in hand, you ought to realise that this company has an unprecedented history of philanthropy, and it saddens me to know that somebody at that company with their eyes in profit instead of the Right Thing screwed up so royally with the debacle we know today as Vioxx.
Whatever happens with that company, I hope that at least some of their positive ideological foundations are continuted.
If China pegs over to the Euro the the USA will be history.
No. China's pegging the Renmibi to the US Dollar drags down the Renmibi, enabling the flux of cheap made-in-China goods to the United States. However, a poor US dollar is good for American manufacturers because that in turn makes it a whole lot easier for American exports. But it's definitely in favor of China. If the Renmibi were floated, the price of Chinese-made goods would skyrocket (China right now is like America in the Roaring 20's), and they'd lose a big part of their competitive edge.
More worrying for me is that if OPEC starts pricing in Euros instead of US dollars. Strengths in the Euro, a currency that is proving itself mightily fiscally sound, would be felt at home, hard--we are the energy economy. As I understand it, OPEC sells more oil products to Europe, and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is proposing such a transition. When the price of oil skyrocketed, Europeans barely felt the difference because of the weak US dollar.
The debt issue is a big one, as you rightfully pointed out. We back this up with the hegemony of the US dollar held in foreign reserves, but, if this hegemony is dilluted by the Euro or whatever currency, there goes most of the dollar value--which, guess what, is already being dragged down by the deficit itself. It's a vicious circle.
The two solutions to this are getting America off the oil economy, before it's too late, and reigning in government spending--neither of which this administration really cares about. That's what's most frightening.
If anything, they do provide some sort of equilibrium that's been lacking in the top-down, spoon fed to the masses nature of most traditional media sources.
In the old days, when the newspaper was wrong or simply not paying attention, you could send a pithy letter to the editor and hoped it gets published, depending on his humility and the risk he wants to take of losing a few kneejerk ignorant subscribers. In other words, fat chance.
Now, when the media's wrong, you have your own public forum to soundoff in any way you please--be it the one sentence the editor might publish, or the ten-page diatribe that would never go anywhere on its own. Likely, there will be others that think the same way you do. And when a simple Google search by the interested public, a government official, or that newspaper editor can connect those opinions by a simple query and actually look deeper into the story, we thus have the option for real media accountability. And that is the real power of blogging.
Not too long ago, we had a post regarding SGI's reclaim of the record. Shortly thereafter we now have IBM saying they've got something better in the works and it's only a tenth the speed of the final rollout.
With the next Top 500 list a week away, it seems to me that companies are putting more credence into their position on the list...which begs the question, how much is maintaining the fastest supercomputer in the world worth a company like to IBM, or any other company?
It seems that with IBM's resources, they could easily maintain a machine owned by them that would hold that #1 spot on the list for all time. Of the serious contenders for such a position, I only see IBM as having the manufacturing, research, and consulting potential to use this machine for both marketing and research values. Ergo, anyone with a computational problem could send the job over to IBM and have the answer at a cost representative of the timeliness of the answer and the computing power it would take to solve it.
I don't know how much such an endeavour would cost to build and maintain, but given IBM's financial resources, I think they could afford it.
UIs in Opensource seem to be a problem for those who are new to opensource software. While I applaud opensource programmer's efforts in creating easier software which invites more users, I can't help but feel that "tainting the userbase" can come with serious unintended consequences. As you move towards user friendly software, you run the risk of alienating users who like user spiteful software.
When Microsoft introduced "task oriented" design (such as with folders and control panel applets), they didn't forget about the old users, leaving the option to revert to "classic" views. For the most part, my Windows XP desktop at work looks like Windows 95, and I like it like that.
Gnome, on the other hand, strived so much for usable software that they alienated their userbase, and thus we have GoneME--indeed, their Project Goals are admirable.
So much is focused on making opensource pass the Mom test, but I'm afraid of it failing the experienced users test in the process.
Thunderbird has a nifty feature that if the email contains remote images, it won't load them unless you tell it too. That and its spam filters are quite intelligent. Blaming HTML mail readers completely isn't fair--believe it or not, there are some that don't do this default sucky behavior.
Except latency sucks, and DirecWay's Fair Access Policy means that if you download more than 169 MB in some period of time (their website doesn't say), you get dropped to 47 kbps for 8 - 12 hours.
The software for my roommate's digital camera was a 125 MB download from HP. Using this for anything like installing or upgrading a Linux box is out of the question. I've seen 50 MB government documents doled out like candy.
Ergo, as long as the world keeps getting more byte-bloated, the technical limitations of satellite internet will plague it into highly rural markets, as even many small communities have some form of land-based broadband.
I'd suggest DirecWay if you've got a cabin in the middle of nowhere, but that's about it.
Andy Grove probably realised that the tech boom was not forever, and given his increasing age probably wanted to just let the company hold its own with his name not attached to it as it once was. See if it'll manage and grow old like IBM (they came from the Hollerith era of computing.)
Jack Welch probably realised the same about GE. A CEO can only hold the company for so long. Company life cycle theory is quite interesting, and I'd like to see how Intel favors under it.
Put it another way. It's all about how well the company can do when the CEO jumps ship. Some CEO replacements were up to the task, like IBM's and GE's, whereas others might just sink. Does Intel need to be in every market it's in? Probably not.
How long they go on is a good question. Are they going to be like the 171-year-old Shell in Royal Dutch/Shell. Will they be swallowed up somewhere along the way like Seagate buying up Conner? Or will they just disappear...for a while (like Napster) or forever (like a dotcommer). Just think, only one of the original DJIA-30 is still on the DJIA-30 (if you exclude the years-ago hiatus). It's GE. Go figure.
Warning: I do have a slight AMD bias, as they're in my machine now. But I'm posting anyway.
AMD, and I'm just supposing here, is a bigger customer than caseoutlet.com. Volume buying is advantageous in buying PC components for three reasons: Price, brand, and component quality are now negotiable. Go to https://my.seagate.com/guest to see an example of volume pricing/corporate partnerships in action. Being able to take the volume advantanges to the "target market" is AMD's strategy. Howerver, your parent poster is not part of this target market, which gives caseoutlet's Mini-ITX box some advantages.
1. Quality--I'm supposing, that with more buying power, they get to see the actual data that OEM statisticians use when they come up with that wonderful MTBF number, and get first pick on the drives that thus have higher TBF hours. Not every hard drive that has the same model number has the same failure rate.
2. Brand. According to this article on Cnet, AMD will stock these with Seagate and Samsung Products. From my standpoint, they just tend to be "better" than the random components that fit the general description of "DDR 128MB" or whathaveyou that caseoutlet.com features.
3. Price. The machine you talk about costs $296/$342 vs. $185. $185 is a lot easier for me to afford than than $296/$342, and I'm supposing people the PIC is targeted to think the same. A 10 GB hard drive bought in volume from the manufacturer vs. an 80 GB harddrive bought from a company who went through a distributor who bought from the manufacturer will likely be cheaper. Same with the RAM.
Power usage is another--people in the target markets don't exactly have the same quality electric service as Western markets; therefore every watt you save makes a difference. And the guy running the server might be concerned about how long the box could last on battery backup. The AMD Geode is a low-power version of the Cyrix MediaGX with MMX and 3Dnow. The GX 500 consumes 1.1W of power. The Eden 533 consumes 2.5 - 5 W of power, depending on whether the above link is an ESP or -N. Likely ESP as the -N is more embeddable and what I assume costly. I don't have model numbers so I can't compare the other components individual power usage.
Plus this is AMD's thing, and they're not gonna use a Via CPU in there when they have their own better solution. Moreover, as AMD has their market defined (perhaps too narrowly by not offering an optional RJ45 port), they can stick whatever components that fit that market in the box.
It's all about market, however. Your parent poster, somebody computer-literate in a developed nation, does not seem daunted by the task of getting a non-Windows OS on this working (It will likely be easier on the Eden box). If he's willing to cross demographics, then it's an ideal solution for his needs.
Yes. The one in Tempe, Arizona seems to be staffed with knowledgable, helpful, and alert people. Though I don't seem to recall this always being the case. I would like to know if Fry's does actually have a shitty customer service experience, where these stores are, and what Fry's is doing about it.
Answers of Yes, Everywhere, and Nothing don't count.;P
Canes seem to be a simple solution. Unfortunately canes, especially those not set at the correct height, can cause the user to lean on them. This causes straining in the lower back muscles and vertebrae. Plus, it's a crutch of sorts, and there's just something unnatural about using a third leg as a solution to immobility. I'd like to see the studies that show what the long-term usage of canes and other such non-natural support apparati actually do to the human musculoskeletal system.
The Segway, on the other hand, relies on the natural balance of the human being. There's no leaning on canes or hobbling on cruches, just standing. That seems to be a paramount improvement on the low-tech alternative.
"Microsoft will build support for WS-Management into an update to Windows Server"
Once this support is built, I have a feeling that if you so much as ping a Windows server, regardless of whether it's enabled, it'll instantly give you full-administrator in some fun only-by-Microsoft way. Combining IIS and the management level that they're talking about seems to just beg for disaster.
Does it seem odd to anyone that AOL settled an antitrust suit not by better leveraging their own product but by gaining free access to someone else's? What kind of "antitrust settlement" is it when the actual terms therein strengthen the offending product's hold on the market? AOL's acquisition of Netscape finally makes sense--it was never about the browser, they just used it to get free Microsoft technology for seven years with the added benefit of having the Netscape "brand" (whatever that's worth) at its disposal (see Netscape's showing up as a discount ISP/free email/netscape.com, etc). AOL doesn't seem to mind at all that Microsoft is a monopoly, or we'd see real settlements like forced distribution of Netscape products with new copies of Windows.
I really hope karmaic justice bites AOL in the ass for this one. Settling a lawsuit with AOL in the manner they both did was like the non-agression pact signed by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. From near everything that the company has done, Microsoft doesn't want to play nice, cooperate, or form joint-ventures with anyone. Sooner or later, Microsoft is going to look at AOL's position in the "content" market and attempt to eradicate them from it--probably using IE technology that they both agreed to share.
To that end, we have the Lesser GPL, which would allow compiled applications themselves to be closed-source.
It's funny you mention readline, because I seem to recall there being some disagreement about it being GPL'd as opposed to LGPL'd. In the FSF'sopinion on the subject, "releasing it under the GPL and limiting its use to free programs gives our community a real boost. At least one application program is free software today specifically because that was necessary for using Readline."
It is paradoxical here that the FSF dims their own light on behalf of their own greater good. In the case of readline, and I'm sure a possibly GPL'd java class library, is that when the license which inhibits adoption by closed-source folks who wish to develop in their own manner, these same closed-source folks will instead opt for a more restrictive/liberal alternative (depending on your point of view) that enables them to continue to do what they've been doing all along--develop closed-source software. This slows the overall adoption rate of open-source software.
Open-source seems to grow best when it's not forced down our throats or dangled in front of us like an unattainable carrot. The ideal solution should be to showcase the power of open-source in combination with the freedom to do what you want with it, including using it in closed-source. This greatly assists open-source's wide-scale adoption. Lao Tsu said it best: "Build your enemies a golden bridge to retreat across."
Look at GCC and friends--closed source software built on GPL'd and LGPL'd libraries released for open-source platforms such as Linux increases that platform's market share. Regardless of how you perceive Flash and RealPlayer1, they are both closed-source applications that help Linux be a better desktop OS because you can easily view a good chunk of the WWW with it without having to learn about swfdec or mplayer/xine, respectively. And people all over can move their IIS/Oracle/ASP application letter by letter to LAMP2--all because interoperability with the closed and open is possible.
In summary, let the open and the closed comingle, because the open will certainly prevail.
1. It should also be noted that once in the open-source world, people will be more prone to ditch those closed-source holdovers in favor of the aforementioned open-source (and many times superior) alternatives.
2. Substitute L for F, N, O, H, as applicable. The P can stand for whatever the hell you want--I'm not getting into that tonight.;)
You should be mindful of the codec. The.dvr-ms files that MCE produces are ENORMOUS and you can't do a flippant thing with them. I've searched for recoders but my efforts have been fruitless...maybe they're out there now but I don't care anymore as I have myth working mostly OK now.
With Myth, you can automagically transcode to DivX in the background, and have the ability to store far more video files in the same amount of space. Thus, Myth lets your ass-groove flourish because you're not getting up nearly as much to go to Fry's to buy a new hard drive to store recordings.:P
It should also be noted that the latest MythTV also has direct DVD ripping, and has the live TV in the on-screen guide. KnoppMyth should be incorporating this in the future.
"... you go ahead and ignore drivers as a problem."
I don't. But microsoft does, and that's the problem. Microsoft loves to brag about their reliability, but their fundamental problem is that a faulty driver hoses the system. And that's not inherent to computing--QNX doesn't have that problem--things are kept separate so that even if you have a real, genuine, honest-to-God faulty driver, the rest of the system stays alive. That's reliability, that's something that Microsoft cannot and will never offer judging by their past appraoches.
"Computers AREN'T cars, and NONE of them behave like it."
I know they're not. I was comparing Microsoft's poor non-proactive approach to solving problems with their own OS.
"Linux is still a nightmare for the average user..."
Since when did I talk about Linux or any other OS in my reply?
You discount my postings as Microsoft-sucks-and-linux-is-better "fanboy crap" when I was simply pointing out that Microsoft is fairly irresponsible when it comes to the stability of their own product. My fundamental, unanswered question was and remains: "Why isn't Windows six-sigma stable or three-nines stable to begin with?"
Slashdot Mirror
Just out of curiosity, what other major software vendors are still providing security (or other) hotfixes for platforms two or three generations back? Do Oracle, SAP etc. and other major commercial vendors do the same?
I know Linux does. The 2.0 development cycle has seen work from July 1996 to February 2004. Since the source is open and I'm sure there's some 2.0 folks still around, any security fixes, as rare as they come up in the kernel, could easily be backported.
Companies EOLing stuff after 9 - 10 years scares me. With the notion of pervasive computing and kernels showing up in a wide range of things, the concept of software lasting far longer than we thought is now nothing new. Consider Y2K-affected machines--engineers never thought their products would still be running 30 years later, but somehow, they were.
You'd think that as big a company as Microsoft is, they'd support old crufty stuff ad infinitum to give their own products that lasting aura of strength and integrity. Of course, there's no money to be made in releasing patches for 10 year old stuff, but the simple notion that all customers could have access to them could be a major competitive advantage.
Just think, do you really know when you're going to be replacing that server you've just setup?
How do you suppose two or three hours of warning would help in the task of evacuating 50 to 100 million people? Take, for example, the recent rash of hurricanes in the southeast U.S. Even with days of notice, the interstate highways out of Florida resembled parking lots.
I'd get on a bike, or maybe a four wheel drive vehicle or motorcycle. If I knew I was going to die if I didn't get out of the area in three hours, I'd throw the important stuff (a survival kit, anything with a high value:mass ratio, maybe some photographs and hard drives from machines) in a backpack and just take off. Get to high ground and dodge everybody trying to drive.
I don't have proof because it hasn't happened, but I surmise most people in affected areas would have a disaster-movie mentality of throwing everything but the kitchen sink in the family sedan only to wait around in a 200 mile parking lot. Remember the last scene in Deep Impact--this isn't a spoiler, the movie sucked--where a vast majority of people drowned in a wave while stuck in traffic (how fitting) whereas if they just spent 5 minutes climbing up an adjoining hill they could have survived?
Nowadays, with mass media and Internet hype about to cause the end of the world, now's a probably good time to get yourself a survival kit, a good pair of shoes, a topographic map, instantly removable hard drive enclosure kit, and become acquainted with a treadmill. Even forgoing the last option, spending three hours and a hundred bucks now putting together such a backpack might just save your life in the future.
--sean
But Wikipedia's "staff" of volunteers is "better than any full-time staff you could imagine, because there are so many people involved," Sanger says. Any malicious or mistaken entry "is going to be instantly noticed" and corrected.
Bzzt. Wikipedia has a LOT of articles...430000+ in the English version alone, with varying ranges of popularity, of course. Vandalism that happens on some articles will be corrected immediately, vandalism on others could take days to languish. I've seen insidiously biased and incomplete articles that take far longer than an instant to get fixed.
What's more troubling is that people think Wikipedia is an end-all of knowledge. I wish it were, I really do. The problem is, a vandal or somebody just flatout misinformed could easily change some obscure date from like 1342 to 1324 and nobody except an expert could possibly notice and correct. From this we can derive a major problem in Wikipedia: The number of bad edits to good editors can be incredibly disproportionate, and everyone else in between won't usually know the difference.
In a perfect world, we'd seek out that information three times over before using it, and change any wrong edits back, but humans are just naturally lazy and not inquisitive enough when it comes to information on Wikipedia. In some sordid way, Wikipedia really does reflect the sum of all human knowledge. It's just that humans aren't perfect.
When someone uploads a patch to an opensource project, you have a pretty good idea of the effectiveness of that patch--it'll either do what it says, or it won't, if the new source will even compile. Bugs can be found by the sheer number of people using the software, and they're usually a lot more apparent than an unfact on Wikipedia. No information compiler exists, and it doesn't spit out warnings when you've mispelled somebody's name, transposed a digit in their birthyear, or just die when you've got something completely wrong.
I think Wikipedia would do well to perhaps remove editing by anonymous users, or perhaps introduce some sort of moderation system like those discussed elsewhere in the thread. The problem with these solutions is that knowledge is very fleeting--sometimes somebody just won't care long enough to create an account before an edit, or they might be a rare holder of some tidbit of knowledge that can't be verified by a moderator. And who's to say the moderator's correct?
Wikipedia has a vast amount of potential. Their pursuit for freedom in both beer and speech of human knowledge is remarkably admirable, and I consider them one of the best Internet charities around. Regardless of the inherent problems, I will continue to be an editor and support them in other ways as time goes on.
--sean
Would you really expect otherwise from such a small town in Lousiana?
Erm. The same company that devloped Vioxx also devloped Ivermectin (Mectizan), a highly effective treatment plan (once every 12 months) for River blindness, a dehabilitating disease that affects people who can't afford modern medicine. Despite Merck dumping about $290 million into developing the treatment, they give it away for free.
Before you attack Merck with pitchforks and torches in hand, you ought to realise that this company has an unprecedented history of philanthropy, and it saddens me to know that somebody at that company with their eyes in profit instead of the Right Thing screwed up so royally with the debacle we know today as Vioxx.
Whatever happens with that company, I hope that at least some of their positive ideological foundations are continuted.
--sean
If China pegs over to the Euro the the USA will be history.
No. China's pegging the Renmibi to the US Dollar drags down the Renmibi, enabling the flux of cheap made-in-China goods to the United States. However, a poor US dollar is good for American manufacturers because that in turn makes it a whole lot easier for American exports. But it's definitely in favor of China. If the Renmibi were floated, the price of Chinese-made goods would skyrocket (China right now is like America in the Roaring 20's), and they'd lose a big part of their competitive edge.
More worrying for me is that if OPEC starts pricing in Euros instead of US dollars. Strengths in the Euro, a currency that is proving itself mightily fiscally sound, would be felt at home, hard--we are the energy economy. As I understand it, OPEC sells more oil products to Europe, and Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez is proposing such a transition. When the price of oil skyrocketed, Europeans barely felt the difference because of the weak US dollar.
The debt issue is a big one, as you rightfully pointed out. We back this up with the hegemony of the US dollar held in foreign reserves, but, if this hegemony is dilluted by the Euro or whatever currency, there goes most of the dollar value--which, guess what, is already being dragged down by the deficit itself. It's a vicious circle.
The two solutions to this are getting America off the oil economy, before it's too late, and reigning in government spending--neither of which this administration really cares about. That's what's most frightening.
If anything, they do provide some sort of equilibrium that's been lacking in the top-down, spoon fed to the masses nature of most traditional media sources.
In the old days, when the newspaper was wrong or simply not paying attention, you could send a pithy letter to the editor and hoped it gets published, depending on his humility and the risk he wants to take of losing a few kneejerk ignorant subscribers. In other words, fat chance.
Now, when the media's wrong, you have your own public forum to soundoff in any way you please--be it the one sentence the editor might publish, or the ten-page diatribe that would never go anywhere on its own. Likely, there will be others that think the same way you do. And when a simple Google search by the interested public, a government official, or that newspaper editor can connect those opinions by a simple query and actually look deeper into the story, we thus have the option for real media accountability. And that is the real power of blogging.
--sean
It's Ruby Tuesday, and I don't suggest you eat there. I got Salmonella from them, and they got a visit from the county health department.
Not too long ago, we had a post regarding SGI's reclaim of the record. Shortly thereafter we now have IBM saying they've got something better in the works and it's only a tenth the speed of the final rollout.
With the next Top 500 list a week away, it seems to me that companies are putting more credence into their position on the list...which begs the question, how much is maintaining the fastest supercomputer in the world worth a company like to IBM, or any other company?
It seems that with IBM's resources, they could easily maintain a machine owned by them that would hold that #1 spot on the list for all time. Of the serious contenders for such a position, I only see IBM as having the manufacturing, research, and consulting potential to use this machine for both marketing and research values. Ergo, anyone with a computational problem could send the job over to IBM and have the answer at a cost representative of the timeliness of the answer and the computing power it would take to solve it.
I don't know how much such an endeavour would cost to build and maintain, but given IBM's financial resources, I think they could afford it.
--sean
UIs in Opensource seem to be a problem for those who are new to opensource software. While I applaud opensource programmer's efforts in creating easier software which invites more users, I can't help but feel that "tainting the userbase" can come with serious unintended consequences. As you move towards user friendly software, you run the risk of alienating users who like user spiteful software.
When Microsoft introduced "task oriented" design (such as with folders and control panel applets), they didn't forget about the old users, leaving the option to revert to "classic" views. For the most part, my Windows XP desktop at work looks like Windows 95, and I like it like that.
Gnome, on the other hand, strived so much for usable software that they alienated their userbase, and thus we have GoneME--indeed, their Project Goals are admirable.
So much is focused on making opensource pass the Mom test, but I'm afraid of it failing the experienced users test in the process.
--sean
Thunderbird has a nifty feature that if the email contains remote images, it won't load them unless you tell it too. That and its spam filters are quite intelligent. Blaming HTML mail readers completely isn't fair--believe it or not, there are some that don't do this default sucky behavior.
--sean
Except latency sucks, and DirecWay's Fair Access Policy means that if you download more than 169 MB in some period of time (their website doesn't say), you get dropped to 47 kbps for 8 - 12 hours.
The software for my roommate's digital camera was a 125 MB download from HP. Using this for anything like installing or upgrading a Linux box is out of the question. I've seen 50 MB government documents doled out like candy.
Ergo, as long as the world keeps getting more byte-bloated, the technical limitations of satellite internet will plague it into highly rural markets, as even many small communities have some form of land-based broadband.
I'd suggest DirecWay if you've got a cabin in the middle of nowhere, but that's about it.
Andy Grove probably realised that the tech boom was not forever, and given his increasing age probably wanted to just let the company hold its own with his name not attached to it as it once was. See if it'll manage and grow old like IBM (they came from the Hollerith era of computing.)
Jack Welch probably realised the same about GE. A CEO can only hold the company for so long. Company life cycle theory is quite interesting, and I'd like to see how Intel favors under it.
Put it another way. It's all about how well the company can do when the CEO jumps ship. Some CEO replacements were up to the task, like IBM's and GE's, whereas others might just sink. Does Intel need to be in every market it's in? Probably not.
How long they go on is a good question. Are they going to be like the 171-year-old Shell in Royal Dutch/Shell. Will they be swallowed up somewhere along the way like Seagate buying up Conner? Or will they just disappear...for a while (like Napster) or forever (like a dotcommer). Just think, only one of the original DJIA-30 is still on the DJIA-30 (if you exclude the years-ago hiatus). It's GE. Go figure.
--sean
Warning: I do have a slight AMD bias, as they're in my machine now. But I'm posting anyway.
AMD, and I'm just supposing here, is a bigger customer than caseoutlet.com. Volume buying is advantageous in buying PC components for three reasons: Price, brand, and component quality are now negotiable. Go to https://my.seagate.com/guest to see an example of volume pricing/corporate partnerships in action. Being able to take the volume advantanges to the "target market" is AMD's strategy. Howerver, your parent poster is not part of this target market, which gives caseoutlet's Mini-ITX box some advantages.
1. Quality--I'm supposing, that with more buying power, they get to see the actual data that OEM statisticians use when they come up with that wonderful MTBF number, and get first pick on the drives that thus have higher TBF hours. Not every hard drive that has the same model number has the same failure rate.
2. Brand. According to this article on Cnet, AMD will stock these with Seagate and Samsung Products. From my standpoint, they just tend to be "better" than the random components that fit the general description of "DDR 128MB" or whathaveyou that caseoutlet.com features.
3. Price. The machine you talk about costs $296/$342 vs. $185. $185 is a lot easier for me to afford than than $296/$342, and I'm supposing people the PIC is targeted to think the same. A 10 GB hard drive bought in volume from the manufacturer vs. an 80 GB harddrive bought from a company who went through a distributor who bought from the manufacturer will likely be cheaper. Same with the RAM.
Power usage is another--people in the target markets don't exactly have the same quality electric service as Western markets; therefore every watt you save makes a difference. And the guy running the server might be concerned about how long the box could last on battery backup. The AMD Geode is a low-power version of the Cyrix MediaGX with MMX and 3Dnow. The GX 500 consumes 1.1W of power. The Eden 533 consumes 2.5 - 5 W of power, depending on whether the above link is an ESP or -N. Likely ESP as the -N is more embeddable and what I assume costly. I don't have model numbers so I can't compare the other components individual power usage.
Plus this is AMD's thing, and they're not gonna use a Via CPU in there when they have their own better solution. Moreover, as AMD has their market defined (perhaps too narrowly by not offering an optional RJ45 port), they can stick whatever components that fit that market in the box.
It's all about market, however. Your parent poster, somebody computer-literate in a developed nation, does not seem daunted by the task of getting a non-Windows OS on this working (It will likely be easier on the Eden box). If he's willing to cross demographics, then it's an ideal solution for his needs.
--sean
The video file is likely to slashdot the server, so I've created a mirror at http://emvis.net/skycutter40-1.wmv. Enjoy.
--sean
Yes. The one in Tempe, Arizona seems to be staffed with knowledgable, helpful, and alert people. Though I don't seem to recall this always being the case. I would like to know if Fry's does actually have a shitty customer service experience, where these stores are, and what Fry's is doing about it.
;P
Answers of Yes, Everywhere, and Nothing don't count.
--sean
But what if you have ... and I hate to say this, a "Dualie?"
--sean
There's a reason they call it a "touchscreen." Have you forgotten about your tactile abilities already?
Canes seem to be a simple solution. Unfortunately canes, especially those not set at the correct height, can cause the user to lean on them. This causes straining in the lower back muscles and vertebrae. Plus, it's a crutch of sorts, and there's just something unnatural about using a third leg as a solution to immobility. I'd like to see the studies that show what the long-term usage of canes and other such non-natural support apparati actually do to the human musculoskeletal system.
The Segway, on the other hand, relies on the natural balance of the human being. There's no leaning on canes or hobbling on cruches, just standing. That seems to be a paramount improvement on the low-tech alternative.
--sean
"Microsoft will build support for WS-Management into an update to Windows Server"
Once this support is built, I have a feeling that if you so much as ping a Windows server, regardless of whether it's enabled, it'll instantly give you full-administrator in some fun only-by-Microsoft way. Combining IIS and the management level that they're talking about seems to just beg for disaster.
--sean
Does it seem odd to anyone that AOL settled an antitrust suit not by better leveraging their own product but by gaining free access to someone else's? What kind of "antitrust settlement" is it when the actual terms therein strengthen the offending product's hold on the market? AOL's acquisition of Netscape finally makes sense--it was never about the browser, they just used it to get free Microsoft technology for seven years with the added benefit of having the Netscape "brand" (whatever that's worth) at its disposal (see Netscape's showing up as a discount ISP/free email/netscape.com, etc). AOL doesn't seem to mind at all that Microsoft is a monopoly, or we'd see real settlements like forced distribution of Netscape products with new copies of Windows.
I really hope karmaic justice bites AOL in the ass for this one. Settling a lawsuit with AOL in the manner they both did was like the non-agression pact signed by the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. From near everything that the company has done, Microsoft doesn't want to play nice, cooperate, or form joint-ventures with anyone. Sooner or later, Microsoft is going to look at AOL's position in the "content" market and attempt to eradicate them from it--probably using IE technology that they both agreed to share.
--sean
I thought the whole point of it all was to not end up at the point where we're all trying to kill each other in the first place?
To that end, we have the Lesser GPL, which would allow compiled applications themselves to be closed-source.
;)
It's funny you mention readline, because I seem to recall there being some disagreement about it being GPL'd as opposed to LGPL'd. In the FSF's opinion on the subject, "releasing it under the GPL and limiting its use to free programs gives our community a real boost. At least one application program is free software today specifically because that was necessary for using Readline."
It is paradoxical here that the FSF dims their own light on behalf of their own greater good. In the case of readline, and I'm sure a possibly GPL'd java class library, is that when the license which inhibits adoption by closed-source folks who wish to develop in their own manner, these same closed-source folks will instead opt for a more restrictive/liberal alternative (depending on your point of view) that enables them to continue to do what they've been doing all along--develop closed-source software. This slows the overall adoption rate of open-source software.
Open-source seems to grow best when it's not forced down our throats or dangled in front of us like an unattainable carrot. The ideal solution should be to showcase the power of open-source in combination with the freedom to do what you want with it, including using it in closed-source. This greatly assists open-source's wide-scale adoption. Lao Tsu said it best: "Build your enemies a golden bridge to retreat across."
Look at GCC and friends--closed source software built on GPL'd and LGPL'd libraries released for open-source platforms such as Linux increases that platform's market share. Regardless of how you perceive Flash and RealPlayer1, they are both closed-source applications that help Linux be a better desktop OS because you can easily view a good chunk of the WWW with it without having to learn about swfdec or mplayer/xine, respectively. And people all over can move their IIS/Oracle/ASP application letter by letter to LAMP2--all because interoperability with the closed and open is possible.
In summary, let the open and the closed comingle, because the open will certainly prevail.
1. It should also be noted that once in the open-source world, people will be more prone to ditch those closed-source holdovers in favor of the aforementioned open-source (and many times superior) alternatives.
2. Substitute L for F, N, O, H, as applicable. The P can stand for whatever the hell you want--I'm not getting into that tonight.
--sean
You should be mindful of the codec. The .dvr-ms files that MCE produces are ENORMOUS and you can't do a flippant thing with them. I've searched for recoders but my efforts have been fruitless...maybe they're out there now but I don't care anymore as I have myth working mostly OK now.
:P
With Myth, you can automagically transcode to DivX in the background, and have the ability to store far more video files in the same amount of space. Thus, Myth lets your ass-groove flourish because you're not getting up nearly as much to go to Fry's to buy a new hard drive to store recordings.
It should also be noted that the latest MythTV also has direct DVD ripping, and has the live TV in the on-screen guide. KnoppMyth should be incorporating this in the future.
"... you go ahead and ignore drivers as a problem."
I don't. But microsoft does, and that's the problem. Microsoft loves to brag about their reliability, but their fundamental problem is that a faulty driver hoses the system. And that's not inherent to computing--QNX doesn't have that problem--things are kept separate so that even if you have a real, genuine, honest-to-God faulty driver, the rest of the system stays alive. That's reliability, that's something that Microsoft cannot and will never offer judging by their past appraoches.
"Computers AREN'T cars, and NONE of them behave like it."
I know they're not. I was comparing Microsoft's poor non-proactive approach to solving problems with their own OS.
"Linux is still a nightmare for the average user..."
Since when did I talk about Linux or any other OS in my reply?
You discount my postings as Microsoft-sucks-and-linux-is-better "fanboy crap" when I was simply pointing out that Microsoft is fairly irresponsible when it comes to the stability of their own product. My fundamental, unanswered question was and remains: "Why isn't Windows six-sigma stable or three-nines stable to begin with?"