I lived for the day this announcement would come... it was just a speculation a few years ago... and now they're going to patent it? Come on guys... it's supposedly for the well-being of humanity.
I suppose you put a lot of work and money into it... however, I can't (don't want to) imagine a single company holding a grasp of the entire industrialized world, which at some time could come to depend entirely on hydrogen, instead of oil.
How about giving away the patent into the public domain? That way, your name will be remembered for all eternity, as the inventor of the first viable hydrogen-producing method, while at the same time saying that you weren't some kind of greedy businessman.
This is the first thing that should be stopped. If hardware companies start doing this, picture our bleak future:
- Nvidia just rolled out their new XXX-Super-Duper Graphics Accelerator Linux enhanced distro... which of course, can include a binary version of their driver... not the source! - NEC sets up for download their new Nec 1.44Mb diskette drive Linux enhanced distro... only... it doesnt use the XYZ WM I want! NO!!! Now, I wont be able to use my floppy drive.
I know Im exaggerating it a bit. But, seriously, this kind of thing should be stopped. We should all hold together, and tell the hardware manufacturers we DO NOT WANT a specific Linux distro for their motherboards... we only want them to provide the necessary technical details to write a Linux driver, or, better, a GPL driver for their hardware, and thats it! Alan and his pals will surely do short work of it.
But please, lets all mail the hardware manufacturers (if we cant slashdot their websites... maybe we can slashdot their mailboxes!:) and tell them exactly that... that they really shouldnt go to all the trouble of rolling out their own distro... just send the details to Alan Cox and his pals... and the community will do the rest.
I remember that a lot of problems cropped up when trying to do 100Mbit Ethernet on existing wiring, which only barely could manage 10Mbps. What will happen to most of the wiring already laid out. Will it have to be thrown out? I remember hearing about a Cat-6 cable. Will we have to upgrade our networks?
Also, anybody got information on how collision handling is done on this new architecture? I would suppose that, being a gigabit ethernet, it would surely see much more usage than a 100Mbps one, and being also much higher speed, there should be more collisions.
Just imagine this. Everyone's thinking that maybe some hackers looking for fame or some highly trained academics are responsible for this, while there are those that think that it's some commercial techkids or some government agency that started all this, because they wouldn't want publicity, and that's why we haven't seen someone holding responsible for this.... but let's take that idea a little bit further.
Let's imagine that Microsoft hid a bug in it's Windows95, Windows98 and Windows NT code? (Bug: By definition, a feature that cannot be turned off). It may have been on purpose, or maybe not. Whatever the case, can you imagine 50 million Windows boxes, each sending a single ping request to yahoo, ebay, etc? I know it sounds a bit farfetched, but so far nobody has come up with any ideas, there's no "big" source of traffic. So, maybe it's because there isn't one at all. It's just 50 million boxes connected to the Internet, most via dialup, sending a single ping request, once a minute, for three hours. Suddenly, all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place.
If hackers all around the world started doing this, there would suddenly be no Open-Source anymore! I know I sound a bit like RMS, but you can't have "exceptions" in open source, and to have one "insider" doing it is a bad way to start.
In my opinion, all open source hackers, and people committed to developing open, free software (as in speech, not beer), should also commit themselves that, if they're developing something for the community, to completely release it under the GPL.
If we don't, developers will start like: "This software is free for end-users, home-users... etc, but not for commercial users." How exactly do you define a commercial user? Worse, how exactly do you enforce such a license? The simple, better-for-all way is simply to GPL it.
Even though Linux accounted for 25% of all server shipments, it accounted for 1 or 2% of the total revenue for operating systems last year. I guess that's where companies like RedHat and VALinux should be aiming... services sold ALONG with their operating system, not selling the system as a whole.
Also, note that IDC's study didn't take into account the thousands of server installations that get done with a single Slackware or RedHat CD. Taking those installations into account, I'm pretty sure Linux edges even NT in market space.
Why doesn't Slashdot run a poll asking what desktop environment slashdotters prefer? Personally, I use KDE. I don't give a damn about that license, which only restricts the end user, if the end user is a developer. Otherwise, it's exactly as free as the GPL. And the fact that KDE is prettier also has some weight here...
I believe all this nonsense will reach a point where all authorities will eventually see that it's useless trying to stop all of Slashdot mirroring cryptographic source code.
It would be a VERY BAD THING if this Linux IPO suddenly goes the same way as RedHat or VALinux... I really doubt it, I think most investors at least have some common sense.
On another matter, I think RedHat will end the year with less than half of it's actual stock value. The reason? Anyone can do what they have done. In sharp contrast, VALinux has the hardware business going for it. I think that, in the long run, VALinux is likely to start making more money, faster, than RedHat is ever going to be able.
Even though there are ways that a Linux system can be compromised, it is usually through the root user installing malicious code himself. Aside from that, there is no other way a Linux user can infect his whole system by compiling an unknown program.
Maybe these russians just thought they could shake up the media a bit if they did that... and get a fair share of the market, in case a "Antivirus for Linux" ever exists...
Katz is onto something...
on
AOL Nation
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· Score: 3
I definitely agree with him... on some aspects. It would definitely be a huge corporation, with the power to do almost anything it wanted... anything, that is, except control the software their customers run on.
I see it as just a huge ISP company joining a huge media company... no big deal there, but is it ME who still gets to decide how do I view their content, or whether to view it or not... after all, there's still a lot of other media companies, in the US and around the world. Remember, the net is, again, that which makes this possible.
It's totally different from Microsoft's bloated ambition... to control every electronic device you have or interact with... now that's scary.
Its only about a week of additional effort... probably the most hit will be the RC-64 project, which has been diminishing its rate slightly recently because of people flocking to CSC... hopefully, just another week is needed before getting all the people working back on RC-64.
Well, the new kernel might just contain some security related fix, in which case it is recommended that you upgrade... in my experience, I've always upgraded kernels shortly after release, just so I can have the newest one, just in case. Have yet to see a bug in any of the kernels, though... I've been working with Linux from 2.0.29 up to now.
Re:I suspect that the hype prevented the disaster
on
Apocalypse Not
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· Score: 1
I don't really think there will be a lot of the present machines working in 2037. How many 1963 computers are right now in production right now in the world? I would say I'm impressed if there were more than a couple dozen of them. And of these, how many are controlling electrical facilities, dams, nuclear power generators, etc?... Yeah, I didn't think so either. And finally, our rate of technology adoption is actually accelerating. We even change computers every couple of years at our houses! So, it will be extremely unlikely that any present working computer be still functioning in 2037... except maybe as a museum relic.
Well, so far, after three hours and 13 minutes, nothing has happened... at least, the water is still running, electricity is working without a hitch, I have two computers at home which rolled over during a Warcraft II and Alpha Centauri match... no problems there... and finally, my Linux and NT servers seem to work OK. So, at least so far, nothings happened... still have to go check my account balance on the ATM, though...
These guys think they know what's going on, but usually they don't... on the contrary, I think Linux usage will grow, from a 15% of the server market right now, to probably some 40% or 50% of new servers, be them web servers or normal data servers. I also think most other Unix operating systems will dissappear, with the probable exception of Solaris and AIX... all the rest will fade away into obscurity...
Meanwhile, Windows will continue to lose terrain, both on the server market (which has already started), and on the client market (just starting)... on many cases, the giving away of StarOffice by Sun Microsystems will be the drip that overflows the bucket, since some 90% of office users use only, well, Office.
Of course they are. Heck, it's even a lot cheaper, as evidenced by the falling prices on CPU s these days. The thing is, Alphas are a lot faster than Intel CPUs, as a 600Mhz Alpha currently outperforms even a 750Mhz Athlon. It's more expensive, but it's faster, and since Compaq wants to promote their own Alpha processors, it might just be a marketing tactic.
Just thinking... if you're going to do number crunching, and recording data off it, why not design a Beowulf cluster from the ground up, say four or eight Celeron 500s with 64Mb each(about $500 each without monitor, keyboard, mouse and video card, but with 100Mbps PCI netcard), hooked up to a RAID Level 5, say some 5 25Gb disks, for 100Gb total disk-space, and a 100Mb-full switch, for a grand total of maybe $6000... and you have one helluva of a data crunching machine...
Yes, Linux was the right Unix in the right place at the right time, and it took away BSD's chance to rule the world. However, a lot of people I know who work or tinker around in Linux, myself included, would have already tried out BSD if it weren't so adamant about two things: First, you can do whatever you want with the source code, including making it closed-source and selling it off, and second, that requirement to mention the University of California at Berkeley to everything you do and later redistribute. First off, one likes to give credit where credit is due, and I'd say that 99% of GPL software gives credit to the original authors somewhere in the source code, even though they are not forced to. However, forcing people to put it in is not liked by the developers, and so, they favor Linux, besides that fact that, by now, Linux is plenty more popular.
And second, it's a lot more "cool" belonging to a community where all involved cooperate and share their code, instead of hiding it and trying to sell it to you later. It's more of a sense of belonging to a truly free community, one that can't be tarnished by people taking all that software and selling it repackaged as closed-source.
I think that, mostly, describes my feelings on the subject. Just my $0.02...
Life doesn't have to be carbon-based, nor needing water in order to survive. How about a polysilicate kind of life, probably much simpler and primitive than "life" as we know it, but maybe a lot more interesting... (stands more heat, more cold, more pressure, maybe can move by "slithering" around... who knows?) Or how about some gaseous kind of life? We sure as heck don't know anything like that right now, but nobody says gases can't evolve to something interesting, just as carbon does...
When someone says life, everyone inmediately thinks it should be humanoids... it isn't necesarily that way...
I don't like what I'm seeing... they're already starting to use their sheer power (read: Money) to buy everybody else. Although all their products continue to be free (GPL), I don't see why RedHat wouldn't, at some point in the future, declare Sendmail and GCC to be some RHPL (RedHat Public License), which is almost, but not quite, compatible with the GPL and the Open Source spirit... then what will happen to Open Source as we know it today?
You would start seeing "RedHat only" enhancements, not quite compatible with the standards, AND declaring them RHPL... uh oh, starts sounding like Some Huge Software Company...
It's kind of scary... why don't they just stick to providing services, instead of buying out open source companies?
Slashdot Mirror
I lived for the day this announcement would come... it was just a speculation a few years ago... and now they're going to patent it? Come on guys... it's supposedly for the well-being of humanity.
I suppose you put a lot of work and money into it... however, I can't (don't want to) imagine a single company holding a grasp of the entire industrialized world, which at some time could come to depend entirely on hydrogen, instead of oil.
How about giving away the patent into the public domain? That way, your name will be remembered for all eternity, as the inventor of the first viable hydrogen-producing method, while at the same time saying that you weren't some kind of greedy businessman.
Just my thoughts on it.
This is the first thing that should be stopped.
:) and tell them exactly that... that they really shouldnt go to all the trouble of rolling out their own distro... just send the details to Alan Cox and his pals... and the community will do the rest.
If hardware companies start doing this, picture our bleak future:
- Nvidia just rolled out their new XXX-Super-Duper Graphics Accelerator Linux enhanced distro... which of course, can include a binary version of their driver... not the source!
- NEC sets up for download their new Nec 1.44Mb diskette drive Linux enhanced distro... only... it doesnt use the XYZ WM I want! NO!!! Now, I wont be able to use my floppy drive.
I know Im exaggerating it a bit. But, seriously, this kind of thing should be stopped. We should all hold together, and tell the hardware manufacturers we DO NOT WANT a specific Linux distro for their motherboards... we only want them to provide the necessary technical details to write a Linux driver, or, better, a GPL driver for their hardware, and thats it! Alan and his pals will surely do short work of it.
But please, lets all mail the hardware manufacturers (if we cant slashdot their websites... maybe we can slashdot their mailboxes!
Ive spoken.
I remember that a lot of problems cropped up when trying to do 100Mbit Ethernet on existing wiring, which only barely could manage 10Mbps. What will happen to most of the wiring already laid out. Will it have to be thrown out? I remember hearing about a Cat-6 cable. Will we have to upgrade our networks?
Also, anybody got information on how collision handling is done on this new architecture? I would suppose that, being a gigabit ethernet, it would surely see much more usage than a 100Mbps one, and being also much higher speed, there should be more collisions.
Just imagine this. Everyone's thinking that maybe some hackers looking for fame or some highly trained academics are responsible for this, while there are those that think that it's some commercial techkids or some government agency that started all this, because they wouldn't want publicity, and that's why we haven't seen someone holding responsible for this.... but let's take that idea a little bit further.
Let's imagine that Microsoft hid a bug in it's Windows95, Windows98 and Windows NT code? (Bug: By definition, a feature that cannot be turned off). It may have been on purpose, or maybe not. Whatever the case, can you imagine 50 million Windows boxes, each sending a single ping request to yahoo, ebay, etc? I know it sounds a bit farfetched, but so far nobody has come up with any ideas, there's no "big" source of traffic. So, maybe it's because there isn't one at all. It's just 50 million boxes connected to the Internet, most via dialup, sending a single ping request, once a minute, for three hours. Suddenly, all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place.
What do you think?
Who knows what else, aside from detecting DDoS does it do? Give us the source, then we'll install it and check our machines.
:)
I have a couple of Linux boxes, but wouldn't dream of ever installing software from the FBI on it, unless I can peruse and check the source.
In the meanwhile, and as someone else already said, who the hell cares if big-name sites go down? My site's running ok!
If hackers all around the world started doing this, there would suddenly be no Open-Source anymore! I know I sound a bit like RMS, but you can't have "exceptions" in open source, and to have one "insider" doing it is a bad way to start.
In my opinion, all open source hackers, and people committed to developing open, free software (as in speech, not beer), should also commit themselves that, if they're developing something for the community, to completely release it under the GPL.
If we don't, developers will start like: "This software is free for end-users, home-users... etc, but not for commercial users." How exactly do you define a commercial user? Worse, how exactly do you enforce such a license? The simple, better-for-all way is simply to GPL it.
Even though Linux accounted for 25% of all server shipments, it accounted for 1 or 2% of the total revenue for operating systems last year. I guess that's where companies like RedHat and VALinux should be aiming... services sold ALONG with their operating system, not selling the system as a whole.
Also, note that IDC's study didn't take into account the thousands of server installations that get done with a single Slackware or RedHat CD. Taking those installations into account, I'm pretty sure Linux edges even NT in market space.
Great! Now, finally, I can throw away my Win95 partition, and use only the Linux one. With Starcraft on Linux, I need nothing else!
Why doesn't Slashdot run a poll asking what
desktop environment slashdotters prefer?
Personally, I use KDE. I don't give a damn
about that license, which only restricts the
end user, if the end user is a developer.
Otherwise, it's exactly as free as the GPL.
And the fact that KDE is prettier also has
some weight here...
Let them try to sue us then... :)
I believe all this nonsense will reach a point where all authorities will eventually see that it's useless trying to stop all of Slashdot mirroring cryptographic source code.
It would be a VERY BAD THING if this Linux IPO suddenly goes the same way as RedHat or VALinux... I really doubt it, I think most investors at least have some common sense.
On another matter, I think RedHat will end the year with less than half of it's actual stock value. The reason? Anyone can do what they have done. In sharp contrast, VALinux has the hardware business going for it. I think that, in the long run, VALinux is likely to start making more money, faster, than RedHat is ever going to be able.
Even though there are ways that a Linux system can be compromised, it is usually through the root user installing malicious code himself. Aside from that, there is no other way a Linux user can infect his whole system by compiling an unknown program.
Maybe these russians just thought they could shake up the media a bit if they did that... and
get a fair share of the market, in case a "Antivirus for Linux" ever exists...
I definitely agree with him... on some aspects. It would definitely be a huge corporation, with the power to do almost anything it wanted... anything, that is, except control the software their customers run on.
I see it as just a huge ISP company joining a huge media company... no big deal there, but is it ME who still gets to decide how do I view their content, or whether to view it or not... after all, there's still a lot of other media companies, in the US and around the world. Remember, the net is, again, that which makes this possible.
It's totally different from Microsoft's bloated ambition... to control every electronic device you have or interact with... now that's scary.
Its only about a week of additional effort... probably the most hit will be the RC-64 project, which has been diminishing its rate slightly recently because of people flocking to CSC... hopefully, just another week is needed before getting all the people working back on RC-64.
Go distributed!
Well, the new kernel might just contain some security related fix, in which case it is recommended that you upgrade... in my experience, I've always upgraded kernels shortly after release, just so I can have the newest one, just in case. Have yet to see a bug in any of the kernels, though... I've been working with Linux from 2.0.29 up to now.
I don't really think there will be a lot of the present machines working in 2037. How many 1963 computers are right now in production right now in the world? I would say I'm impressed if there were more than a couple dozen of them. And of these, how many are controlling electrical facilities, dams, nuclear power generators, etc? ... Yeah, I didn't think so either. And finally, our rate of technology adoption is actually accelerating. We even change computers every couple of years at our houses! So, it will be extremely unlikely that any present working computer be still functioning in 2037... except maybe as a museum relic.
Well, so far, after three hours and 13 minutes, nothing has happened... at least, the water is still running, electricity is working without a hitch, I have two computers at home which rolled over during a Warcraft II and Alpha Centauri match... no problems there... and finally, my Linux and NT servers seem to work OK. So, at least so far, nothings happened... still have to go check my account balance on the ATM, though...
Right on... those marketing suits just have no idea what they are talking about most of the time, especially when talking about hi-tech.
These guys think they know what's going on, but usually they don't... on the contrary, I think Linux usage will grow, from a 15% of the server market right now, to probably some 40% or 50% of new servers, be them web servers or normal data servers. I also think most other Unix operating systems will dissappear, with the probable exception of Solaris and AIX... all the rest will fade away into obscurity...
Meanwhile, Windows will continue to lose terrain, both on the server market (which has already started), and on the client market (just starting)... on many cases, the giving away of StarOffice by Sun Microsystems will be the drip that overflows the bucket, since some 90% of office users use only, well, Office.
Of course they are. Heck, it's even a lot cheaper, as evidenced by the falling prices on CPU s these days. The thing is, Alphas are a lot faster than Intel CPUs, as a 600Mhz Alpha currently outperforms even a 750Mhz Athlon.
It's more expensive, but it's faster, and since Compaq wants to promote their own Alpha processors, it might just be a marketing tactic.
Just thinking... if you're going to do number crunching, and recording data off it, why not design a Beowulf cluster from the ground up, say four or eight Celeron 500s with 64Mb each(about $500 each without monitor, keyboard, mouse and video card, but with 100Mbps PCI netcard), hooked up to a RAID Level 5, say some 5 25Gb disks, for 100Gb total disk-space, and a 100Mb-full switch, for a grand total of maybe $6000... and you have one helluva of a data crunching machine...
Just my $0.02
Yes, Linux was the right Unix in the right place at the right time, and it took away BSD's chance to rule the world. However, a lot of people I know who work or tinker around in Linux, myself included, would have already tried out BSD if it weren't so adamant about two things: First, you can do whatever you want with the source code, including making it closed-source and selling it off, and second, that requirement to mention the University of California at Berkeley to everything you do and later redistribute. First off, one likes to give credit where credit is due, and I'd say that 99% of GPL software gives credit to the original authors somewhere in the source code, even though they are not forced to. However, forcing people to put it in is not liked by the developers, and so, they favor Linux, besides that fact that, by now, Linux is plenty more popular.
And second, it's a lot more "cool" belonging to a community where all involved cooperate and share their code, instead of hiding it and trying to sell it to you later. It's more of a sense of belonging to a truly free community, one that can't be tarnished by people taking all that software and selling it repackaged as closed-source.
I think that, mostly, describes my feelings on the subject. Just my $0.02...
Who wouldn't?
Life doesn't have to be carbon-based, nor needing water in order to survive. How about a polysilicate kind of life, probably much simpler and primitive than "life" as we know it, but maybe a lot more interesting... (stands more heat, more cold, more pressure, maybe can move by "slithering" around... who knows?) Or how about some gaseous kind of life? We sure as heck don't know anything like that right now, but nobody says gases can't evolve to something interesting, just as carbon does...
When someone says life, everyone inmediately thinks it should be humanoids... it isn't necesarily that way...
I don't like what I'm seeing... they're already
starting to use their sheer power (read: Money)
to buy everybody else. Although all their
products continue to be free (GPL), I don't see
why RedHat wouldn't, at some point in the future,
declare Sendmail and GCC to be some RHPL (RedHat Public License), which is almost, but not quite,
compatible with the GPL and the Open Source spirit... then what will happen to Open Source as we know it today?
You would start seeing "RedHat only" enhancements,
not quite compatible with the standards, AND declaring them RHPL... uh oh, starts sounding like Some Huge Software Company...
It's kind of scary... why don't they just stick to providing services, instead of buying out open source companies?
Just my $0.02...