I like big numbers like 26. From a marketing perspective I guess it's a little odd, but from a geek perspective I know that early adoption can be a bad idea if you're looking to depend on something, and so knowing at a glance whether I'm adopting something early or not is great.
As an example, if I see 2.6.26 then I know that they've done quite a lot of patching to get 2.6 and it'll be a heck of a lot more reliable than say 2.6.3 would have been.
Of course, it doesn't mean so much if you don't know whether those 26 releases were over 5 years (a sign of quality) or 5 minutes (a sign of poor coding!). It's better than big ugly dates as version numbers though, IMO.
Maybe something like a release *age* would be good, based on (date of current revision) minus (date of last major version). Linux Version 2.6@5y indicates something a bit more mature than 2.6@2d. This could get messy with things like 2.6@5y6m and 2.6:@5y6m-rev2-rc1 though.
How about two version numbers, a basic one for dummies/marketing and an advanced one for geeks?
I'm sure there have been other examples, but this is the first and possibly only example I can think of of a company *actually responding* to requests for a discontinued product to be open-sourced. Let alone actually going ahead and doing it.
Seriously though, as someone suffering life in the UK I wonder how long until this kind of thing is used to control the population. We already have talking CCTV cameras...
Can you hear the cries of the planet? As if to say "I hurt, I suffer".
-- Bugenhagen, Final Fantasy VII, Observatory. He explains how all planets emit these sound waves but how ours cries in pain (and throws in the odd scream for good measure)
Yep I'm an FF geek. But then, I guess this isn't all that new if people have already based fiction on it.
Well the first thing I did when WH Smith enabled their electronic magazine service was try to crack it (not easy, it uses encrypted PDFs). So people definitely have it on their minds!
Having said that though the main reason was to try and read the mags on platforms other than Windows (they use some proprietary Windows software). I don't really mind the paying for magazines bit.
"..we know how to ruin your life better than you.."
Corrected that for you.
The problem with shifting personal control and responsibility to the government is that it just makes the matter worse: people can no longer be arsed to judge whether something is good or bad for them, figuring that they can just rely on the government to tell them. (And look for someone to sue when they're wrong.)
I am coming to believe that the rabid fanboi is a mythological figure. I have never once actually encountered such a person. http://forums.macrumors.com/
Post a problem/criticism... and watch the denial flow. I made a post there about my new iMac overheating if I try to play a game on it and the first answer was that I shouldn't be pushing the hardware like that and shouldn't be trying to play games on it as I'm "not part of their target market".
To be fair, most of the answers after that were helpful and constructive.
The management would probably *love* to axe our IT department, and believe me I'm sure they've thought about it.
And then someone who "knows their stuff" - the kind of person they'd be relying on if they axed the IT department - has a go at fixing something and digs a hole 10x bigger. We come along and fix it, and the management realise they can't do without us. Happens everywhere in IT, where you are seen as a liability and tend to get the blame for everything including the weather - occasionally companies think they can get away with just people who know a bit about computers/networking, but the people who "know a bit" who are the most dangerous... it just takes pointing that out (by example preferably) to hang on to your job.
I love how if Microsoft stole ideas from some little innovational business they'd be seen as the scum of the universe, but Apple does the same thing (this and not to forget Konfabulator) and everyone is busy thinking up excuses for how it's perfectly fair.
OLEDs are rubbish anyway, I have one of those OLED MP4 watches, it got burn-in within mere hours. They also have a ridiculously low MTBF (they'll stay bright for like a year max)
Yeah but we'd get moderated down as a troll:) Seriously though, no problems here, and yes I'm a geek (I'm on Slashdot for starters!). Guess I'm just lucky.
Number one complaint seems to be the UAC prompts. Eh? You're geeks, why let the OS protect you from yourself? Turn it off! Problem solved.
The other gripe is hardware and software compatibility. Doesn't anyone remember when XP came out? Ooooh boy, gaming? Forget it!!
Upgrades do break things (even happens in the Apple world, check out Leopard). Developers and hardware manufacturers do catch up. Just wait a little while, it'll be fine in the end like XP was... don't adopt early unless you've checked out the compatibility with what you use.
When Apple comes out with the same thing at an even greater cost:)
Seriously though, this could be the beginning of flash based storage hitting the mainstream in laptops. The capacity is small right now (though how many people really *need* 300GB? Oh right... pr0n...) but I'm sure if it becomes popular, progress will follow at a decent pace.
You're not missing much, it's real bleeding edge stuff... maybe some of these things are not available elsewhere yet because of tighter quality regulations? I mean the watch suffered "burn-in" during the first day I got it, I don't think that'd be allowed by trading standards etc in the UK or US.
At work, where I'm more interested in successful communication, I save in.doc because it is the industry standard. When you email your document to someone, that's the format they expect, and (perhaps unfortunately) most companies use Microsoft Word. In just about any case I can imagine, if you emailed a.odf to someone in business their reaction would be more like.wtf
At home, where I'm more interested in being able to open my notes etc in 30 years' time (amongst the usual other reasons), I favour the open standard, where even in the worst case and odf dies a death and nobody has written an importer for the last 25 years, at least if the spec is still available somewhere I educate myself hard enough I can eventually open it, whilst ancient.doc files are "some old format by that Macro Soft or whatever they were called" and long since consigned to the intellectual property trash can.
A fair point. Allow me to clarify: if the DVDs are actually available;)
I refer back to my point on anime in the previous post. Ironically, it seems that the one I was talking about (Naruto) is available from first glance although I think it has to be imported from the US (bleh) and I have a feeling it'll have the "Americanized" subtitles (if you see what I mean, i.e. over-translated). Plus it's shockingly expensive to buy a full series!
One other thing I forgot to mention - DVDs. I don't see why people spend a fortune on bandwidth (and time) downloading the things, in a compressed format, when you can usually buy the DVD dirt cheap, save yourself the trouble and the bandwidth, and have something better quality too. Furthermore it keeps the likes of the MPAA off your back.
Exception: I've been known to copy rental DVDs for personal use. Even then there's no point really as I very very rarely get around to re-watching anything. Anything that I do like so much that I find the time, is probably worth buying...
I don't tend to pirate software any more, as there's simply no need. There is an OSS tool for just about every job, and many of them are getting to the point (finally) where they're actually up to the standard of commercial software.
The only commercial software I need tends to be small utilities (which usually have an honest developer who deserves the money) and Windows (It's too much like hard work to pirate it and keep it up to date anyway)
Music - rips are very often bad quality or difficult to get hold of - if it's available on iTunes for 99p then I'm willing to pay that to save the hassle.
Which just leaves anime. I must admit, although fansubs are technically illegal (presumably) I greatly prefer them to dubs. And the easiest way to get 'em is to download 'em. If Jump were to supply downloadable subs of Naruto themselves (translated in a proper fan-like fashion, not a dub-like one i.e. I don't want to read "Believe It!" every 10 seconds) then by all means the money would be theirs.
Slashdot Mirror
How about looking inside Dubya's br..... oh wait.... as you were. :)
Only on slashdot...
I like big numbers like 26. From a marketing perspective I guess it's a little odd, but from a geek perspective I know that early adoption can be a bad idea if you're looking to depend on something, and so knowing at a glance whether I'm adopting something early or not is great.
As an example, if I see 2.6.26 then I know that they've done quite a lot of patching to get 2.6 and it'll be a heck of a lot more reliable than say 2.6.3 would have been.
Of course, it doesn't mean so much if you don't know whether those 26 releases were over 5 years (a sign of quality) or 5 minutes (a sign of poor coding!). It's better than big ugly dates as version numbers though, IMO.
Maybe something like a release *age* would be good, based on (date of current revision) minus (date of last major version). Linux Version 2.6@5y indicates something a bit more mature than 2.6@2d. This could get messy with things like 2.6@5y6m and 2.6:@5y6m-rev2-rc1 though.
How about two version numbers, a basic one for dummies/marketing and an advanced one for geeks?
Ah, the mighty Microhoogletube of the holy hadrojassicmaxarodenfoe.
(I just call him Mike).
I'm sure there have been other examples, but this is the first and possibly only example I can think of of a company *actually responding* to requests for a discontinued product to be open-sourced. Let alone actually going ahead and doing it.
Bravo Google :)
Seriously though, as someone suffering life in the UK I wonder how long until this kind of thing is used to control the population. We already have talking CCTV cameras...
Can you hear the cries of the planet? As if to say "I hurt, I suffer".
-- Bugenhagen, Final Fantasy VII, Observatory. He explains how all planets emit these sound waves but how ours cries in pain (and throws in the odd scream for good measure)
Yep I'm an FF geek. But then, I guess this isn't all that new if people have already based fiction on it.
Well the first thing I did when WH Smith enabled their electronic magazine service was try to crack it (not easy, it uses encrypted PDFs). So people definitely have it on their minds!
Having said that though the main reason was to try and read the mags on platforms other than Windows (they use some proprietary Windows software). I don't really mind the paying for magazines bit.
Toshiba... aren't they the ones with the exploding batteries or am I thinking of another manufacturer?
:)
Either way, with the industry's track record with lithium ion I think making nuclear batteries will have to be done with a wee bit of caution
"..we know how to ruin your life better than you.."
Corrected that for you.
The problem with shifting personal control and responsibility to the government is that it just makes the matter worse: people can no longer be arsed to judge whether something is good or bad for them, figuring that they can just rely on the government to tell them. (And look for someone to sue when they're wrong.)
The phrase "you can't polish a turd" springs to mind here!
Surely from the you-can't-polish-a-turd department.
Post a problem/criticism... and watch the denial flow. I made a post there about my new iMac overheating if I try to play a game on it and the first answer was that I shouldn't be pushing the hardware like that and shouldn't be trying to play games on it as I'm "not part of their target market".
To be fair, most of the answers after that were helpful and constructive.
The management would probably *love* to axe our IT department, and believe me I'm sure they've thought about it.
And then someone who "knows their stuff" - the kind of person they'd be relying on if they axed the IT department - has a go at fixing something and digs a hole 10x bigger. We come along and fix it, and the management realise they can't do without us. Happens everywhere in IT, where you are seen as a liability and tend to get the blame for everything including the weather - occasionally companies think they can get away with just people who know a bit about computers/networking, but the people who "know a bit" who are the most dangerous... it just takes pointing that out (by example preferably) to hang on to your job.
I love how if Microsoft stole ideas from some little innovational business they'd be seen as the scum of the universe, but Apple does the same thing (this and not to forget Konfabulator) and everyone is busy thinking up excuses for how it's perfectly fair.
OLEDs are rubbish anyway, I have one of those OLED MP4 watches, it got burn-in within mere hours. They also have a ridiculously low MTBF (they'll stay bright for like a year max)
Yeah but we'd get moderated down as a troll :) Seriously though, no problems here, and yes I'm a geek (I'm on Slashdot for starters!). Guess I'm just lucky.
Number one complaint seems to be the UAC prompts. Eh? You're geeks, why let the OS protect you from yourself? Turn it off! Problem solved.
The other gripe is hardware and software compatibility. Doesn't anyone remember when XP came out? Ooooh boy, gaming? Forget it!!
Upgrades do break things (even happens in the Apple world, check out Leopard). Developers and hardware manufacturers do catch up. Just wait a little while, it'll be fine in the end like XP was... don't adopt early unless you've checked out the compatibility with what you use.
When Apple comes out with the same thing at an even greater cost :)
Seriously though, this could be the beginning of flash based storage hitting the mainstream in laptops. The capacity is small right now (though how many people really *need* 300GB? Oh right... pr0n...) but I'm sure if it becomes popular, progress will follow at a decent pace.
/evercrack
Or a similar one anyway.
You're not missing much, it's real bleeding edge stuff... maybe some of these things are not available elsewhere yet because of tighter quality regulations? I mean the watch suffered "burn-in" during the first day I got it, I don't think that'd be allowed by trading standards etc in the UK or US.
At work, where I'm more interested in successful communication, I save in .doc because it is the industry standard. When you email your document to someone, that's the format they expect, and (perhaps unfortunately) most companies use Microsoft Word. In just about any case I can imagine, if you emailed a .odf to someone in business their reaction would be more like .wtf
.doc files are "some old format by that Macro Soft or whatever they were called" and long since consigned to the intellectual property trash can.
At home, where I'm more interested in being able to open my notes etc in 30 years' time (amongst the usual other reasons), I favour the open standard, where even in the worst case and odf dies a death and nobody has written an importer for the last 25 years, at least if the spec is still available somewhere I educate myself hard enough I can eventually open it, whilst ancient
When Eric eats a Banana he becomes....
Fondly *sigh*
Aces High just isn't the same...
A fair point. Allow me to clarify: if the DVDs are actually available ;)
I refer back to my point on anime in the previous post. Ironically, it seems that the one I was talking about (Naruto) is available from first glance although I think it has to be imported from the US (bleh) and I have a feeling it'll have the "Americanized" subtitles (if you see what I mean, i.e. over-translated). Plus it's shockingly expensive to buy a full series!
One other thing I forgot to mention - DVDs. I don't see why people spend a fortune on bandwidth (and time) downloading the things, in a compressed format, when you can usually buy the DVD dirt cheap, save yourself the trouble and the bandwidth, and have something better quality too. Furthermore it keeps the likes of the MPAA off your back.
Exception: I've been known to copy rental DVDs for personal use. Even then there's no point really as I very very rarely get around to re-watching anything. Anything that I do like so much that I find the time, is probably worth buying...
The answer in *most* cases is 'only in the past'.
I don't tend to pirate software any more, as there's simply no need. There is an OSS tool for just about every job, and many of them are getting to the point (finally) where they're actually up to the standard of commercial software.
The only commercial software I need tends to be small utilities (which usually have an honest developer who deserves the money) and Windows (It's too much like hard work to pirate it and keep it up to date anyway)
Music - rips are very often bad quality or difficult to get hold of - if it's available on iTunes for 99p then I'm willing to pay that to save the hassle.
Which just leaves anime. I must admit, although fansubs are technically illegal (presumably) I greatly prefer them to dubs. And the easiest way to get 'em is to download 'em. If Jump were to supply downloadable subs of Naruto themselves (translated in a proper fan-like fashion, not a dub-like one i.e. I don't want to read "Believe It!" every 10 seconds) then by all means the money would be theirs.