oh, I give an answer that you don't understand and I'm billed an arrogant computer geek. how wonderfully childish.
what arrogance? i said I could be wrong. I seriously don't know if office docs use com structured storage - I think they do, otherwise you couldn't save compound documents.
i'm speaking in the language of the facts & if you can't deal with it, stop spreading your bullshit fud.
clue: http://msdn.microsoft.com read "Structured Storage" in the Platform SDK
then come back when you have a real argument.
info is sent to MS during the Win98 registration. CLUE: a GUID is a unique identifier - WHY NOT USE IT to identify a person who has registered, as in a DATABASE PRIMARY KEY? Gee.
The concern is that it may not have been the wisest privacy choice as it's tied to the MAC address, but my point is that it was a technical decision. If MS were "really" using it, why would they say "oh we'll just purge the info out of our database".. Gee, sounds like it was a relational database ROW identifier to me....
Oh wait, don't tell me you don't understand relational databases, either?
;sigh;
I *DO NOT* like Microsoft, but I dislike bullshit FUD a lot more.
This is NOT a grand conspiracy
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you're quite right, and it probably would be a better solution, but as I said, GUIDs are 'historical baggage' from DCE RPC...
Again, it depends how they store the document. I think it's done through a COM-oriented API, which would explain the GUID. Microsoft likes COM-everything for some reason, even if COM is ugly.
I agree there probably is a suitable alternative, but you're making a very large, illogical leap from "bad technical choice" to "tracking piracy".
longish rant ahead...it's been building up for a while inside of me, so i'm going to spew it out now..:)
Looking at ESR's philosophy & RMS' philosophy, it's hard to sway my opinion to one side or the other.... primarily because I don't believe there really is/should be a "side".
The primary point of this community is to _increase personal freedom_.
That goal is a profoundly moral goal, hence you can't ignore RMS. The problems I have with RMS' side of the philosophy is that he's in favour of an "all or nothing" approach - the GPL is structured very much in a way such that you have _COMPLETE_ freedom, even if this isn't economically justifiable in today's software industry realities (where revenues are measured in the billions).
ESR's side of the story justifies the practical good of the 'bazaar' model & having more personal freedom to modify the code. I'm in full agreement there. I do notice, however, that his followers seem to downplay the "Cathedral" approach to development as something that "just doesn't work". This is nonsense - many successful projects & works of art start with vision and planning - not just spontaneous "itches that need scratching".
Basically, the cathedral *AND* the bazaar are complementary models. They should co-exist. (I think esr would agree.. I hope, anyway)
Look at Linux, the GIMP, FreeBSD, Apache, Emacs, etc. All started as "cathedral"-like projects with a central programmer or programming team. Now that they've matured, the bazaar model makes a lot more sense for new features to be added, while Linus continues his "manager's role" of rejecting/accepting *major* new features that conform to his vision of Linux.
Put another way, the ability to MANAGE a project, such as Linus' authority to say "NO" to a dumb kernel feature, is what's really important to have a successful software project. No model can replace smart people. And this is where things get shaky... how many Linus' are out there? Not very many, I don't think.
Notice how that's a very different concept for most engineers. Management traditionally has been viewed as the pointy-haired incompetent type. My claim is that Linus represents the "new breed" of managers that are needed in the "open source community": technically competent people who (in a humble way) make effective decisions.
So, while I think the Bazaar model is great, the practical/pragmatic benefits of open source don't seem enough to make the world accept this model. One still needs management, one still needs vision, and one still needs a talented (and most likely well-paid) central team. Hey, that sounds A LOT like the current state of affairs in the software industry!
So, for me, the choice of "free software" vs. "proprietary" comes down to a moral choice. i.e. does "Sharing" help the industry? Well, duh, of course it does! I think the more enlightened companies like IBM and Sun are starting to see this: protecting IP is a way over-abused mechanism of ensuring competitive advantage, that doesn't really work all that well... creative imitation has essentially rendered proprietary code irrelevant, as Microsoft has shown again & again by copying the truly "inventive" products. Creative imitation as a form of innovation right now is locking the industry into almost a decade of "incrementalism" - I think companies want out of this , or at least a change in how things work (primarily because Microsoft is so good at it, while everyone else isn't, or don't want to be).
So, yes, free software is often a moral choice, but now the question remains if the GPL is the _ONLY_ way to go about doing this. There has to be a way to institute sharing "To allow people to scratch their itches"_BUT_ also enable money to be made.
QUICK LESSON IN CAPITALISM & FREE MARKET ECONOMICS: (yes I read lots of Peter Drucker)
Businesses still have an obligation to remain profitable - freeing software completely and charging for services & distribution is NOT a way to keep a corporation as large as IBM or Sun afloat. Companies have an obligation to society to turn a profit - profit is the only way society's standard of living increases over time, (such are the rules of capitalism)... Personal strengths make social benefits... by working for a company that exploits your strength... or starting your own.
SO I think there needs to be an alternative licence to at least _INCREASE PERSONAL FREEDOM_, even if it doesn't grant total personal freedom. Notice how "increase" matches very well what I think the point of this community is... Why can't we fight for freedom one step at a time, in an economically literate fashion?
RIGHT NOW, human achievement (which is what economics studies) is measured by NUMBERS. The numbers are created by the Alan Greenspans of the world, and are traded by people like it's their god. Money is *JUST* a bunch of numbers. But it's the way we measure achievement today. I think in the complexity of the world's financial markets, most people have lost sight of that... money has value only because we think it has value. [Of course, this is something most economics scholars don't like telling the masses, mainly because no one would believe it.]
Profit is not evil. The rhetoric you hear from so many managers about "profit maximization" and "profit motive" is ignoring the _objective reason_ for profit. Why do they continue harping on those themes? Ignorance. Most people actually believe that "profit maximization" is the name of the game, when that's not true at all. Profit is not the end goal.. it's the _measurement_ of "how well you're doing".
The open source community is softer than using money as a measuremetn.... human achievement is measured in the quality & quantity of code you produce - increasing your prestige and self-fulfillment. Open source is filling the void of personal mastery that many companies have failed to give to programmers. As such, free software will continue to be an excellent complementary social system over time, however, it *must* co-exist with capitalism as _right now_ we still need a "quantitative measure" of 'how we're doing'. (Any measurement is better than no measurement, right?). And that means saying that you can make money "just" off of services & redistribution is not acceptable - the objective of the game is *more* money, not less. Companies today are supporting open source because they have OTHER streams of revenue (hardware, for instance) to maintain profitability.. it's just a matter of time, however, before the "open hardware" advocates come out of the wordwork... then what? Make money on hardware repairs? or how about making only board-level designs open, and charge for ASIC design?...etc...
Sun has found an innovative solution to this that might just work.. the SPARC processor specs are being released, ditto for the source for Java, Solaris, etc. You only have to pay royalities if you sell your modified product. I think this might just work: it increases personal freedom, it increases sharing & learning, and it maintains economic fairness between parties. I think it's a great start, and I'm happy Sun has chosen to be one of the first large companies to dip their toes in the ocean...
Anyhow, that's all I had to say, I think.. rant off
Office documents use the COM structured storage API to save info, from my inderstanding, so essentially, a doc is a serialized com object.
Of course, if this is wrong (which I doubt), you have a point.
This is NOT a grand conspiracy
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COM/DCOM is based open the OSF's DCE RPC when calling remote objects. Objects are identified using a Globally Unique Identifier (GUID), which usually is a fudging of your MAC address + a timestamp + some randomness.
CORBA does this too, though in a slightly different way, (plus it usually hides its unique identifiers from the end-programmer through a persistent name that's called through a COSNaming service, which is why its a lot less clunky to use than COM).
MS did not do this intentionally to 'track' people, it's a way of insuring uniqueness in a theoretical "universal distributed object" namespace.
For a bunch of technical people, I'm surprised you guys don't see the logic of this. Did you even read the whole article? It was pure FUD - the quotes in the article were totally uninformed about the real use of these GUIDs.
Sure, it's kind of annoying, and I'm in favor of a better uniqueness algorithm that DOESN'T use my MAC addy, but this isn't something to get totally worked up over - MS will fix it (they have to, or it'll be a PR nightmare. Try explaining a GUID to a cluebie.)
Goes and comes? What are you talking about?!?
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quick comment....
Roberto, please keep it up. There is a definite need for a (relatively) objective "voice of reason" here.
Looking at this interchange between you and mill, I see the quinessential problem with this whole KDE vs. GNOME issue: there's very little left to flame about anymore, and that pisses off the cynics a lot.... so things just get louder & a lot more silly.
GNOME vs. KDE began with who's ideology is right. Some people in the community (for some reason) *LOVE* confrontation and joined this fight.
Once the ideology became irrelevant (QPL), the flamers had to find a new bone to pick. So they attacked KDE's technology as 'inferior' (though this had always been a periphery argument in favour of Gnome) without ever giving details why (except the ridiculous "C++ sucks use C" argument).
KDE's backers (on Slashdot, not the actual mailing lists) of course are just as guilty of leveling retarded flames at the GNOME community. Calling GNOME vapourware is silly.....Gnome isn't vapourware - it's just immature.
Unfortunately, in a technical community, despite all claims of ideology, the bottom line is always about RESULTS. "SHOW ME THE CODE" is our mantra, as it should be.
With the 1.0 releases out, KDE has shown its code. Gnome has shown its code.
And it's *QUITE* clear to all but someone with a severe case of myopia that GNOME is not up to snuff with KDE in terms of quality.
That's pissed a lot of GNOME-believers off. Reading the 1000+ comments in the GNOME 1.0 Released article, I think GNOME's much-lofted "momentum in the community" took a big hit because of its lack of quality, and the immaturity of its defenders. "KDE is Irrelevant- you can not stop the GNOME JiHAD!" Puh-leeze. I thought this communnity was about diversity.
I'm not saying that GNOME *some day* might be better, but right now its not, and there's really nothing to flame about anymore, (except for outright FUD and bullshitting.)
So, over the next while, as more heat than light is generated in this war, please keep doing what you're doing. The real engineers appreciate the voice of reason.
It's only natural for one to want their favorite product to become more widely used, however people often lose sight of the actual effects of long term use...i.e. if they want to encourage at, they're going to have think like a "businessman".
There's nothing wrong with being a "suit", if you can keep perspective on the details while you "keep your eye on the prize" - what do you want? And do you know what the consequences of getting it are?
Some suits sure do think about $$. Most however, don't place it as the *only* important thing.
A business requires a profit to stay alive. This is as simple as 1 + 1 = 2. This need is unfortunately often clouded by the greed of the few - not the many.
And even more unfortunately, those who don't understand simple economics think that profits == greed, when this isn't often the case at all (though it very well COULD be).
you know, if Linux World were just 2 months from now, I could have gone.. dammit.:)
anyhow, I spoke with one of my friends at the company I work for in San Jose who was at the expo... here's his take:
- Lots & lots & lots of geeks. some really could have used a shower too:0 - Rob was one of the cooler looking people there - Why the hell was compaq & CA there? that's pure lip-service if you ask me.. - He bought > $100 of slashdot stuff.. some for me.. whee.. I have 3 shirts and a hat waiting for me now.. - did I mention, lots of geeks? it's cool for us, but I think the vendors were hoping for more biz-types. ah well - IBM rules - etc
This is a first, small baby step for a large corporation to wholeheartedly embrace the concept of open source. Sun has spoken with *action* here, not just "endorsement"... So I'm glad.
No, it's not "pure" open source, but it *does* increase one's freedom WHILE insuring Sun get's their due if you sell it. That's the important thing.
I have tremendous respect for Yosemite entertainment.. my hearts go out to them.
This *is*, however, a business decision.. the layoffs would have to come from somewhere, most likely, tho I really don't understand why they had too axe one of their most creative group's.
Look at some of Sierra's (not Yosemite's) last few titles... they were really, really bad. Phantasmagoria genereated more hype about having 7 CD's then its actual gameplay & story, which were so-so at best. Outpost... don't get me started.. what a great concept, what poor exectution.
It's ironic that Yosemite pays for the many mistakes of its parent... i saw this re-org coming back in 1995-96... I'm just surprised that it took this shape. (I want that Babylon 5 game, dammit!)
IN the end, life ain't fair, but we live in a competitive world & if sierra games don't sell, things like this happen..
"Ideals" often involve mapping the "real world" with your perceived notion of how it should work.
So yes, they are a part of the world, though they tend to be less grandiose than in past.
There is no shortage of ideology today - BUT - there is an argument that while ideology has been important in past with regards to building social systems (capitalism, socialism, etc.), our social system TODAY is so complex that it's not going to be changing based on the ideal of one person.. it will evolve based on the collective actions of everyone in it... kinda like a complex adaptive system.
Free software works because software itself is a young field and wasn't so complex that there was no room for ideology. However - there's a risk that people following the ideology (the GNU manifesto) are ignoring the changes and complexities around them in the capitalist software world...i.e. we're living in very pluralistic times: "total world domination" is unrealistic.
Actually, it's kind of funny that the "world domination" slogan was very tongue-in-cheek at first, but slowly people kept drinking the Kool-Aid and actually *believed* they could do it, all without understanding a thing about the origins of capitalism, competitiveness, and competitive advantage (which is the typical reason for proprietary software).
The DOJ nailing Microsoft's ass is not due to ideals: it's due to money - MS competitor's money being wasted because of Microsoft's monopoly hold. Most don't view the DOJ trial as a religious war and Microsoft as this evil-empire.
This is what Microsoft is: They're a successful company with some severe ethical problems. They're also intensely competition-focused (vs. customer focused which is their new turnaround strategy) because of Billy G's incesent drive to WIN.
So far, in this world's social systems, ideals HAVE been the major way things are "created" in terms of law & social structure. Going forward, your observation that ideals "regulate" the cruel reality imposed on us is actually a symptom of a larger trend that I alluded to eariler: the world is becoming so complex that ideals are becoming more focused, less grand. In essence, we're seeing incongruities in our grand-reality, and filling those holes up.
So yeah, I do sort of agree that ideals "regulate" the world.
I think the social world is layers-upon-layers of ideals that have grown over time. And you know what? The world isn't really that cruel, (though it is unfair) if you take time to understand our social systems' origins and why they exist today (captialism and market-driven economy, for instance).
....And wouldn't it be bad if the world WERE fair and everything bad that happened to us happened because we deserved it?:)
The problem with software is that it is viewed a lot like music is - you don't "own" a song when you buy a CD single - though you can sell/swap/trade cd's at will, you can't reproduce them legally.
Is this morally wrong, as RMS assumes with software? Software is a different beast, but it shared the "intangible" nature of songwriting.
Open source probably is a better way to handle things, but until the value of people's intellectual property is ably compensated under an open source lincence, it's not going to be viable for large segments of the industry.
The GPL is a good start - it ensures freedom - but it doesn't ensure an artist's right to LARGE AMOUNTS of compensation when people will pay for it - i.e. you're expected to charge a "modest" fee for redistribution of your software - not charge $15k. Furthermore, unlimited reproduction is also not a feasible assumption in today's business environment. I think that the main benefit of open source is the freedom to hack & to share IDEAS - not necessarily "free beer" - i.e. exploiting the work of others without due compensation.
- Seen a red box - Used blue/red box tones through my C64 (Phoneman, was it?) - Ran a BBS for 2-3 years on my C64 with C-Net for a while, then ImageBBS soft., about 2-3 years on my PC w/ Synchronet BBS soft. - Was a FidoNET coordinator for my city for about 18 months when I was 17 years old (FIDO didn't suck too too bad though coordinator politics really were shitty. )
So yep, I was there in the 'old days'.. My first modem was a 300 baud in 1988, when I was 10 years old, my 1200 baud came in 1989... blue boxing was the thing when I was 11-13 years old (before Bell busted a bunch of people in my hometown)...etc Of course, I'm older now & realize that that stuff really "isn't" cool in the grand scheme of things - it's just playing chicken with the law & Bell's incompetency.
A lot of my interests in the software field are in areas that are not really popular with the OSS crowd.. like distributed systems, scalability, transaction monitors, Java, etc.
In a corporation, I can exercise my creativity to make great applications with this technology, AND I can help shape the development of future technologies because there are paying customers out there for this stuff.
OSS is a great cause to support, but it has to be balanced in perspective - it is ONE way of thinking about things in a pluralistic society, and although it's a noble cause, it's not going to change the face of capitalism - far greater trends are already doing that.
Well, I'm not sure how many Linux'ers are into EJB.... I get paid for it, so I am:)
Right now, EJB is still a "nice idea" - only three major products are shipping with it (Persistence PowerTier, Gemstone/J, and BEA WebXPress aka. Weblogic Tengah)...
Essentially right now EJB is quite on par "in concept" with COM+MTS. The problem arises with "confusion". MTS gives you *one* way of doing things: object pooling. (conceptually. In reality, I don't think pooling is out yet... STILL..?!?) EJB gives you a number of options - i.e. conversational & stateful objects vs. stateless & pooled objects. That can be confusing to a newbie who doesn't understand how to architect these things.
Furthermore, the transaction model for EJB is pretty new... I'm skeptical about its scalability when not attached to a 'grade a' TP monitor like Tuxedo or CICS.
The other big issue with this whole COM+/MTS vs. EJB thing is that I'm starting to wonder if people really care. Like, I'm working at this stuff thinking its the next big thing, but I really don't believe that line-enterprise developers UNDERSTAND distributed systems design.
This goes in hand with the shortcomings of these specs: EJB is marketed to shield the app developer from the crap involved with building a large distributed system. Well sorry folks, you can't get away scott-free.. EJB is not mature enough yet to hide this yet. A shittily designed EJB application is MORE than possible: it's very probable, because there are few guides out there as to the tradeoffs of certain design choices.
And what really frosts my shorts is that the MARKETERS of EJB products STILL insist that EJB will cure their productivity woes. Don't let me get started on "re-use".. if someone else tells me I'm going to be able to buy a generic "Customer" component off-the-shelf, I'm going to scream.
My final rant: Netscape - WHERE ARE YOU GUYS??? Kiva / NAS was the best server on the market 6-8 months ago, and now all press for it has fallen off the face of the earth. Heck, the whole app server market is pretty flat because the quality of the products are so poor right now (NetDynamics? Puh-leeze).. The only capable, proven products *right now* are Netscape App Server, Persistence PowerTier and Gemstone/J. WebLogic had *ZERO* deployed Tengah customers when they were bought by BEA, according to the conference call. ZERO. Nadda. It may be a good product, but it's not proven yet. Microsoft Transaction Server is far from being proven in a large-scale situation too.... But I digress.
THREE proven products are out there in my mind. And where, oh where is the press? I haven't seen an application server article/review/anything in a mainstream mag in a long while! It's like the coders of the world are too busy trying to make their Perl and ASP scripts scale on a MS SQL server backend. Hello? While I'm sure some people out there have figured out that ASP & Perl only go so far, I don't think it has been anywhere near the majority of people thinking of doing e-commerce or intensive web stuff.
Actually, there WAS one piece of press recently, the E*Trade hiccups... E*Trade is a NAS+Tuxedo shop, isn't it? eek. What happened there? E*Trade's getting sued for that hiccup... I really hope, for the sake of this technology, that this blows over, because I don't want to have to read Gartner Group reports 6 months from now as to why we should all run our stuff on Windows NT + MTS because the E*Trade crash proved other servers dont' work:)
Anyhow - I'm still rooting for you guys... but please, please, get marketing out of their slumber... There's way too much uncertainty surrounding NAS since the AOL buyout and Sun's pledge to sell your product - umm, where does that leave NetDynamics? Just a slight conflict of interest, in my mind. (But then again, I'm just guessing, because no one's PR Dept has said anything about it. Or if they did, it wasn't loud enough 8-)
Anyhow
(the opinions expressed here are my own, and aren't those of my employer)
Wouldn't it really suck if everything in the world WERE fair, and all the bad thigns that happened to us happened because we deserved them?
No thanks.
An author has a right to keep his software proprietary. To release it in the open is a *choice*. In a property-driven world, yes, it's going to be hard to take the moral high-ground and encourage freedom of software, but that's the sacrifice one has to take when supporting this cause.
Slashdot Mirror
oh, I give an answer that you don't understand and I'm billed an arrogant computer geek. how wonderfully childish.
what arrogance? i said I could be wrong. I seriously don't know if office docs use com structured storage - I think they do, otherwise you couldn't save compound documents.
i'm speaking in the language of the facts & if you can't deal with it, stop spreading your bullshit fud.
'technical squarmish' ?
clue: http://msdn.microsoft.com
read "Structured Storage" in the Platform SDK
then come back when you have a real argument.
info is sent to MS during the Win98 registration. CLUE: a GUID is a unique identifier - WHY NOT USE IT to identify a person who has registered, as in a DATABASE PRIMARY KEY? Gee.
The concern is that it may not have been the wisest privacy choice as it's tied to the MAC address, but my point is that it was a technical decision. If MS were "really" using it, why would they say "oh we'll just purge the info out of our database".. Gee, sounds like it was a relational database ROW identifier to me....
Oh wait, don't tell me you don't understand relational databases, either?
;sigh;
I *DO NOT* like Microsoft, but I dislike bullshit FUD a lot more.
you're quite right, and it probably would be a better solution, but as I said, GUIDs are 'historical baggage' from DCE RPC...
"no technically valid reason"?
Again, it depends how they store the document. I think it's done through a COM-oriented API, which would explain the GUID. Microsoft likes COM-everything for some reason, even if COM is ugly.
I agree there probably is a suitable alternative, but you're making a very large, illogical leap from "bad technical choice" to "tracking piracy".
longish rant ahead...it's been building up for a while inside of me, so i'm going to spew it out now.. :)
...etc...
Looking at ESR's philosophy & RMS' philosophy, it's hard to sway my opinion to one side or the other.... primarily because I don't believe there really is/should be a "side".
The primary point of this community is to _increase personal freedom_.
That goal is a profoundly moral goal, hence you can't ignore RMS. The problems I have with RMS' side of the philosophy is that he's in favour of an "all or nothing" approach - the GPL is structured very much in a way such that you have _COMPLETE_ freedom, even if this isn't economically justifiable in today's software industry realities (where revenues are measured in the billions).
ESR's side of the story justifies the practical good of the 'bazaar' model & having more personal freedom to modify the code. I'm in full agreement there. I do notice, however, that his followers seem to downplay the "Cathedral" approach to development as something that "just doesn't work". This is nonsense - many successful projects & works of art start with vision and planning - not just spontaneous "itches that need scratching".
Basically, the cathedral *AND* the bazaar are complementary models. They should co-exist. (I think esr would agree.. I hope, anyway)
Look at Linux, the GIMP, FreeBSD, Apache, Emacs, etc. All started as "cathedral"-like projects with a central programmer or programming team. Now that they've matured, the bazaar model makes a lot more sense for new features to be added, while Linus continues his "manager's role" of rejecting/accepting *major* new features that conform to his vision of Linux.
Put another way, the ability to MANAGE a project, such as Linus' authority to say "NO" to a dumb kernel feature, is what's really important to have a successful software project. No model can replace smart people. And this is where things get shaky... how many Linus' are out there? Not very many, I don't think.
Notice how that's a very different concept for most engineers. Management traditionally has been viewed as the pointy-haired incompetent type. My claim is that Linus represents the "new breed" of managers that are needed in the "open source community": technically competent people who (in a humble way) make effective decisions.
So, while I think the Bazaar model is great, the practical/pragmatic benefits of open source don't seem enough to make the world accept this model. One still needs management, one still needs vision, and one still needs a talented (and most likely well-paid) central team. Hey, that sounds A LOT like the current state of affairs in the software industry!
So, for me, the choice of "free software" vs. "proprietary" comes down to a moral choice. i.e. does "Sharing" help the industry? Well, duh, of course it does! I think the more enlightened companies like IBM and Sun are starting to see this: protecting IP is a way over-abused mechanism of ensuring competitive advantage, that doesn't really work all that well... creative imitation has essentially rendered proprietary code irrelevant, as Microsoft has shown again & again by copying the truly "inventive" products. Creative imitation as a form of innovation right now is locking the industry into almost a decade of "incrementalism" - I think companies want out of this , or at least a change in how things work (primarily because Microsoft is so good at it, while everyone else isn't, or don't want to be).
So, yes, free software is often a moral choice, but now the question remains if the GPL is the _ONLY_ way to go about doing this. There has to be a way to institute sharing "To allow people to scratch their itches"_BUT_ also enable money to be made.
QUICK LESSON IN CAPITALISM & FREE MARKET ECONOMICS:
(yes I read lots of Peter Drucker)
Businesses still have an obligation to remain profitable - freeing software completely and charging for services & distribution is NOT a way to keep a corporation as large as IBM or Sun afloat. Companies have an obligation to society to turn a profit - profit is the only way society's standard of living increases over time, (such are the rules of capitalism)... Personal strengths make social benefits... by working for a company that exploits your strength... or starting your own.
SO I think there needs to be an alternative licence to at least _INCREASE PERSONAL FREEDOM_, even if it doesn't grant total personal freedom. Notice how "increase" matches very well what I think the point of this community is... Why can't we fight for freedom one step at a time, in an economically literate fashion?
RIGHT NOW, human achievement (which is what economics studies) is measured by NUMBERS. The numbers are created by the Alan Greenspans of the world, and are traded by people like it's their god. Money is *JUST* a bunch of numbers. But it's the way we measure achievement today. I think in the complexity of the world's financial markets, most people have lost sight of that... money has value only because we think it has value. [Of course, this is something most economics scholars don't like telling the masses, mainly because no one would believe it.]
Profit is not evil. The rhetoric you hear from so many managers about "profit maximization" and "profit motive" is ignoring the _objective reason_ for profit. Why do they continue harping on those themes? Ignorance. Most people actually believe that "profit maximization" is the name of the game, when that's not true at all. Profit is not the end goal.. it's the _measurement_ of "how well you're doing".
The open source community is softer than using money as a measuremetn.... human achievement is measured in the quality & quantity of code you produce - increasing your prestige and self-fulfillment. Open source is filling the void of personal mastery that many companies have failed to give to programmers. As such, free software will continue to be an excellent complementary social system over time, however, it *must* co-exist with capitalism as _right now_ we still need a "quantitative measure" of 'how we're doing'. (Any measurement is better than no measurement, right?). And that means saying that you can make money "just" off of services & redistribution is not acceptable - the objective of the game is *more* money, not less. Companies today are supporting open source because they have OTHER streams of revenue (hardware, for instance) to maintain profitability.. it's just a matter of time, however, before the "open hardware" advocates come out of the wordwork... then what? Make money on hardware repairs? or how about making only board-level designs open, and charge for ASIC design?
Sun has found an innovative solution to this that might just work.. the SPARC processor specs are being released, ditto for the source for Java, Solaris, etc. You only have to pay royalities if you sell your modified product. I think this might just work: it increases personal freedom, it increases sharing & learning, and it maintains economic fairness between parties. I think it's a great start, and I'm happy Sun has chosen to be one of the first large companies to dip their toes in the ocean...
Anyhow, that's all I had to say, I think.. rant off
Innovation is creating "new things" that helps you get customers. It is always market-driven.
That includes "creative imitation". It's how Microsoft wins - again & again... They give the herd what they want, even if it's not what they need.
Sucks, huh? Deal with it. No monopoly can win forever on creative imitation...
Office documents use the COM structured storage API to save info, from my inderstanding, so essentially, a doc is a serialized com object.
Of course, if this is wrong (which I doubt), you have a point.
COM/DCOM is based open the OSF's DCE RPC when calling remote objects. Objects are identified using a Globally Unique Identifier (GUID), which usually is a fudging of your MAC address + a timestamp + some randomness.
CORBA does this too, though in a slightly different way, (plus it usually hides its unique identifiers from the end-programmer through a persistent name that's called through a COSNaming service, which is why its a lot less clunky to use than COM).
MS did not do this intentionally to 'track' people, it's a way of insuring uniqueness in a theoretical "universal distributed object" namespace.
For a bunch of technical people, I'm surprised you guys don't see the logic of this. Did you even read the whole article? It was pure FUD - the quotes in the article were totally uninformed about the real use of these GUIDs.
Sure, it's kind of annoying, and I'm in favor of a better uniqueness algorithm that DOESN'T use my MAC addy, but this isn't something to get totally worked up over - MS will fix it (they have to, or it'll be a PR nightmare. Try explaining a GUID to a cluebie.)
quick comment....
Roberto, please keep it up. There is a definite need for a (relatively) objective "voice of reason" here.
Looking at this interchange between you and mill, I see the quinessential problem with this whole KDE vs. GNOME issue: there's very little left to flame about anymore, and that pisses off the cynics a lot.... so things just get louder & a lot more silly.
GNOME vs. KDE began with who's ideology is right. Some people in the community (for some reason) *LOVE* confrontation and joined this fight.
Once the ideology became irrelevant (QPL), the flamers had to find a new bone to pick. So they attacked KDE's technology as 'inferior' (though this had always been a periphery argument in favour of Gnome) without ever giving details why (except the ridiculous "C++ sucks use C" argument).
KDE's backers (on Slashdot, not the actual mailing lists) of course are just as guilty of leveling retarded flames at the GNOME community. Calling GNOME vapourware is silly.....Gnome isn't vapourware - it's just immature.
Unfortunately, in a technical community, despite all claims of ideology, the bottom line is always about RESULTS. "SHOW ME THE CODE" is our mantra, as it should be.
With the 1.0 releases out, KDE has shown its code. Gnome has shown its code.
And it's *QUITE* clear to all but someone with a severe case of myopia that GNOME is not up to snuff with KDE in terms of quality.
That's pissed a lot of GNOME-believers off. Reading the 1000+ comments in the GNOME 1.0 Released article, I think GNOME's much-lofted "momentum in the community" took a big hit because of its lack of quality, and the immaturity of its defenders. "KDE is Irrelevant- you can not stop the GNOME JiHAD!" Puh-leeze. I thought this communnity was about diversity.
I'm not saying that GNOME *some day* might be better, but right now its not, and there's really nothing to flame about anymore, (except for outright FUD and bullshitting.)
So, over the next while, as more heat than light is generated in this war, please keep doing what you're doing. The real engineers appreciate the voice of reason.
C++ worked to fix many of C's shortcomings. As a result, it became a very complicated language.
If you want maximum flexibility in terms of design choices AND ways to increase your code's reliability, C++ is the sanest choice.
If flexibility is less important than reliability & maintainability, something like Python or Java would suffice.
Before you flame something like C++ as "flashy like Win95", please understand its context in this world.
It's only natural for one to want their favorite product to become more widely used, however people often lose sight of the actual effects of long term use...i.e. if they want to encourage at, they're going to have think like a "businessman".
There's nothing wrong with being a "suit", if you can keep perspective on the details while you "keep your eye on the prize" - what do you want? And do you know what the consequences of getting it are?
Some suits sure do think about $$. Most however, don't place it as the *only* important thing.
A business requires a profit to stay alive. This is as simple as 1 + 1 = 2. This need is unfortunately often clouded by the greed of the few - not the many.
And even more unfortunately, those who don't understand simple economics think that profits == greed, when this isn't often the case at all (though it very well COULD be).
you know, if Linux World were just 2 months from now, I could have gone.. dammit. :)
:0
anyhow, I spoke with one of my friends at the company I work for in San Jose who was at the expo... here's his take:
- Lots & lots & lots of geeks. some really could have used a shower too
- Rob was one of the cooler looking people there
- Why the hell was compaq & CA there? that's pure lip-service if you ask me..
- He bought > $100 of slashdot stuff.. some for me.. whee.. I have 3 shirts and a hat waiting for me now..
- did I mention, lots of geeks? it's cool for us, but I think the vendors were hoping for more biz-types. ah well
- IBM rules
- etc
Sounds like fun. 8-)
This is a first, small baby step for a large corporation to wholeheartedly embrace the concept of open source. Sun has spoken with *action* here, not just "endorsement"... So I'm glad.
No, it's not "pure" open source, but it *does* increase one's freedom WHILE insuring Sun get's their due if you sell it. That's the important thing.
Will it work? Time will tell. I'm hopeful.
'Nuff said. Not the *best* graphics around, but pretty sweet for 1993-94.
I have tremendous respect for Yosemite entertainment.. my hearts go out to them.
... don't get me started.. what a great concept, what poor exectution.
This *is*, however, a business decision.. the layoffs would have to come from somewhere, most likely, tho I really don't understand why they had too axe one of their most creative group's.
Look at some of Sierra's (not Yosemite's) last few titles... they were really, really bad. Phantasmagoria genereated more hype about having 7 CD's then its actual gameplay & story, which were so-so at best. Outpost
It's ironic that Yosemite pays for the many mistakes of its parent... i saw this re-org coming back in 1995-96... I'm just surprised that it took this shape. (I want that Babylon 5 game, dammit!)
IN the end, life ain't fair, but we live in a competitive world & if sierra games don't sell, things like this happen..
"Ideals" often involve mapping the "real world" with your perceived notion of how it should work.
:)
So yes, they are a part of the world, though they tend to be less grandiose than in past.
There is no shortage of ideology today - BUT - there is an argument that while ideology has been important in past with regards to building social systems (capitalism, socialism, etc.), our social system TODAY is so complex that it's not going to be changing based on the ideal of one person.. it will evolve based on the collective actions of everyone in it... kinda like a complex adaptive system.
Free software works because software itself is a young field and wasn't so complex that there was no room for ideology. However - there's a risk that people following the ideology (the GNU manifesto) are ignoring the changes and complexities around them in the capitalist software world...i.e. we're living in very pluralistic times: "total world domination" is unrealistic.
Actually, it's kind of funny that the "world domination" slogan was very tongue-in-cheek at first, but slowly people kept drinking the Kool-Aid and actually *believed* they could do it, all without understanding a thing about the origins of capitalism, competitiveness, and competitive advantage (which is the typical reason for proprietary software).
The DOJ nailing Microsoft's ass is not due to ideals: it's due to money - MS competitor's money being wasted because of Microsoft's monopoly hold. Most don't view the DOJ trial as a religious war and Microsoft as this evil-empire.
This is what Microsoft is: They're a successful company with some severe ethical problems. They're also intensely competition-focused (vs. customer focused which is their new turnaround strategy) because of Billy G's incesent drive to WIN.
So far, in this world's social systems, ideals HAVE been the major way things are "created" in terms of law & social structure. Going forward, your observation that ideals "regulate" the cruel reality imposed on us is actually a symptom of a larger trend that I alluded to eariler: the world is becoming so complex that ideals are becoming more focused, less grand. In essence, we're seeing incongruities in our grand-reality, and filling those holes up.
So yeah, I do sort of agree that ideals "regulate" the world.
I think the social world is layers-upon-layers of ideals that have grown over time. And you know what? The world isn't really that cruel, (though it is unfair) if you take time to understand our social systems' origins and why they exist today (captialism and market-driven economy, for instance).
....And wouldn't it be bad if the world WERE fair and everything bad that happened to us happened because we deserved it?
Funny you mention that. I believe that Marx coined socialism as (roughly) a system where the workers "own the means of production".
IF that's true, the U.S. is the most socialist country out there. 50%+ of the stock market is owned by pension plans & mutual funds.
Please, please, PLEASE buy a clue before you post such ignorant drivel.
Money is not evil - its an inanimate object - people can be evil.
...except that it would probably take 10 years.
The problem with software is that it is viewed a lot like music is - you don't "own" a song when you buy a CD single - though you can sell/swap/trade cd's at will, you can't reproduce them legally.
Is this morally wrong, as RMS assumes with software? Software is a different beast, but it shared the "intangible" nature of songwriting.
Open source probably is a better way to handle things, but until the value of people's intellectual property is ably compensated under an open source lincence, it's not going to be viable for large segments of the industry.
The GPL is a good start - it ensures freedom - but it doesn't ensure an artist's right to LARGE AMOUNTS of compensation when people will pay for it - i.e. you're expected to charge a "modest" fee for redistribution of your software - not charge $15k. Furthermore, unlimited reproduction is also not a feasible assumption in today's business environment. I think that the main benefit of open source is the freedom to hack & to share IDEAS - not necessarily "free beer" - i.e. exploiting the work of others without due compensation.
- Seen a red box
:)
- Used blue/red box tones through my C64 (Phoneman, was it?)
- Ran a BBS for 2-3 years on my C64 with C-Net for a while, then ImageBBS soft., about 2-3 years on my PC w/ Synchronet BBS soft.
- Was a FidoNET coordinator for my city for about 18 months when I was 17 years old (FIDO didn't suck too too bad though coordinator politics really were shitty. )
So yep, I was there in the 'old days'.. My first modem was a 300 baud in 1988, when I was 10 years old, my 1200 baud came in 1989... blue boxing was the thing when I was 11-13 years old (before Bell busted a bunch of people in my hometown)...etc
Of course, I'm older now & realize that that stuff really "isn't" cool in the grand scheme of things - it's just playing chicken with the law & Bell's incompetency.
I do miss the old days.
A lot of my interests in the software field are in areas that are not really popular with the OSS crowd.. like distributed systems, scalability, transaction monitors, Java, etc.
In a corporation, I can exercise my creativity to make great applications with this technology, AND I can help shape the development of future technologies because there are paying customers out there for this stuff.
OSS is a great cause to support, but it has to be balanced in perspective - it is ONE way of thinking about things in a pluralistic society, and although it's a noble cause, it's not going to change the face of capitalism - far greater trends are already doing that.
Good comments overall, though... just the anti-business rant at the end didn't suit the rest of the post.
Well, I'm not sure how many Linux'ers are into EJB.... I get paid for it, so I am :)
... I'm skeptical about its scalability when not attached to a 'grade a' TP monitor like Tuxedo or CICS.
:)
... There's way too much uncertainty surrounding NAS since the AOL buyout and Sun's pledge to sell your product - umm, where does that leave NetDynamics? Just a slight conflict of interest, in my mind. (But then again, I'm just guessing, because no one's PR Dept has said anything about it. Or if they did, it wasn't loud enough 8-)
Right now, EJB is still a "nice idea" - only three major products are shipping with it (Persistence PowerTier, Gemstone/J, and BEA WebXPress aka. Weblogic Tengah)...
Essentially right now EJB is quite on par "in concept" with COM+MTS. The problem arises with "confusion". MTS gives you *one* way of doing things: object pooling. (conceptually. In reality, I don't think pooling is out yet... STILL..?!?) EJB gives you a number of options - i.e. conversational & stateful objects vs. stateless & pooled objects. That can be confusing to a newbie who doesn't understand how to architect these things.
Furthermore, the transaction model for EJB is pretty new
The other big issue with this whole COM+/MTS vs. EJB thing is that I'm starting to wonder if people really care. Like, I'm working at this stuff thinking its the next big thing, but I really don't believe that line-enterprise developers UNDERSTAND distributed systems design.
This goes in hand with the shortcomings of these specs: EJB is marketed to shield the app developer from the crap involved with building a large distributed system. Well sorry folks, you can't get away scott-free.. EJB is not mature enough yet to hide this yet. A shittily designed EJB application is MORE than possible: it's very probable, because there are few guides out there as to the tradeoffs of certain design choices.
And what really frosts my shorts is that the MARKETERS of EJB products STILL insist that EJB will cure their productivity woes. Don't let me get started on "re-use".. if someone else tells me I'm going to be able to buy a generic "Customer" component off-the-shelf, I'm going to scream.
My final rant: Netscape - WHERE ARE YOU GUYS??? Kiva / NAS was the best server on the market 6-8 months ago, and now all press for it has fallen off the face of the earth. Heck, the whole app server market is pretty flat because the quality of the products are so poor right now (NetDynamics? Puh-leeze).. The only capable, proven products *right now* are Netscape App Server, Persistence PowerTier and Gemstone/J. WebLogic had *ZERO* deployed Tengah customers when they were bought by BEA, according to the conference call. ZERO. Nadda. It may be a good product, but it's not proven yet. Microsoft Transaction Server is far from being proven in a large-scale situation too.... But I digress.
THREE proven products are out there in my mind. And where, oh where is the press? I haven't seen an application server article/review/anything in a mainstream mag in a long while! It's like the coders of the world are too busy trying to make their Perl and ASP scripts scale on a MS SQL server backend. Hello? While I'm sure some people out there have figured out that ASP & Perl only go so far, I don't think it has been anywhere near the majority of people thinking of doing e-commerce or intensive web stuff.
Actually, there WAS one piece of press recently, the E*Trade hiccups... E*Trade is a NAS+Tuxedo shop, isn't it? eek. What happened there? E*Trade's getting sued for that hiccup... I really hope, for the sake of this technology, that this blows over, because I don't want to have to read Gartner Group reports 6 months from now as to why we should all run our stuff on Windows NT + MTS because the E*Trade crash proved other servers dont' work
Anyhow - I'm still rooting for you guys... but please, please, get marketing out of their slumber
Anyhow
(the opinions expressed here are my own, and aren't those of my employer)
Wouldn't it really suck if everything in the world WERE fair, and all the bad thigns that happened to us happened because we deserved them?
No thanks.
An author has a right to keep his software proprietary. To release it in the open is a *choice*. In a property-driven world, yes, it's going to be hard to take the moral high-ground and encourage freedom of software, but that's the sacrifice one has to take when supporting this cause.