So Red Hat is going to produce Real World next season? We get to hear about their failed relationships, watch them play scavenger hunt games on the Internet and chicken out of jumping out of an airplane??
What geek wants to take time out of their day to pose for photographs and run Baywatch style on the beach??
Red Hat lost it. Are they trying to make geekdom glamorous and comparable to a permanent Spring Break?? What's the gimmick?
I like to state things in the extreme, and so I often misrepresent the point I'm trying to make. I think this is one of thosde cases.
No, a company wouldn't 'sue' a software vendor if the product failed - unless the vendor gave explicit assurance that such a failure would not happen.
When I exaggerate by saying 'sue', I intend for that to mean 'to hold accountable'. This does not neccesarily mean, to have the ability to take losses out of the vendor's hide, but to have some leverage in negotiations and subsequent business dealings.
As one tack pointed out, support contracts provide this sort of accountability. There is not such an animal with Linux. Red Hat may offer support, but it just does not waft the same, does it?
Because there is a long tradition of charging money for it.
Linux, for all it's strengths, is free, and thereby not a profit generating product. With companies such as HP and Intel investing in RedHat, they're getting on the good side of future UNInix developers, who will abandon Linux for a paycheck. They're willing to invest in a free unix as a proof of concept for technologies to be rolled into an 'industrial strength' unix later, complete with support from all the big names in the industry.
To them, Linux isn't really a contender, because end users have no time to learn it and deal with it's support model. Corporate clients NEED to have someone to sue if things go bad. So, these guys are willing to sink some money into Linux development, first to flesh out the hirable talent, and second to get some ideas off the ground for free.
They have no problem with pumping some money into Linux, to keep a lively grass-roots testbed for ideas, and to foster goodwill with people who are more than willing to write those pesky device drivers. But let's not delude ourselves, these big corporations are in business to make money, by selling products and support. They didn't get all this money that they've invested in Linux by giving money to non-profit developers and hobbyists.
They still don't get it. They are so in the habit of selling software, that they're willing to reinvent the wheel to keep on doing it. Why, oh why, can't they just sell hardware and free software? Well, hardware, being the only source of profit, would get real expensive, real fast. And with all those brilliant programmers out there, optimizing free software for the existing hardware, who would want to buy new hardware??
Really, do we need Merced?
Point being, as long as software can be sold, it will be sold. And if Linux could unify unix, why can't they - with the added bonus of support, accountability and $$.
As I read more of the scored postings on/., I see how valuable the OSS approach is, and how everyone here prizes the openness of information, and the self-correcting nature of such development.
But, when it comes to politics, social issues and anything non-code, heads get stuck in the sand. It's disappointing, since even as a teen I held the view that "The Idea is the immortal virus". I forget who said it first, but I completely agree. Ideas evolve much like open source code. Bad ones are not propagated to the next revision, good ones are optimized and become programming cliches and near-dogma, but are never exempt from critique.
It is much like this with politics and news and facts. If they are not questioned, and the bad ones are not exposed for what they are, they become socio-political cruft that we'll have to deal with later. Not forcing politicians to be accountable for their claims is like advocating binary distributions of software, and then wondering why 50 people got an important document from you.
The problem is that all the people who buy into this media propaganda are too busy watching Ricky Lake to question anything they hear. The truth makes their head hurt, so they change the channel.
And somebody has to call him on it! You are completely WRONG, oh prolific AC, in letting Gore take credit for something he did not do. It is setting a dangerous precedent, letting someone take credit for something they have no claim to - just because it doesn't hurt you.
Not speaking out and not informing the public, that the presidential heir-apparent is lying^H^H^H^H^Hmisrepresenting himself, is wrong. Claiming that he (et al) is responsible for the state of the internet is like saying that I (et al) am responsible for the health of the US economy. I go shopping now and again, infusing cash into the system, therefore I claim responsibility for the 10k DOW!!!
I am appalled (dons Johnny Cochran mask) and chagrinned that the informed minority is willing to stand by while another professional politician makes a mockery of the facts. And I am further dismayed and even shocked, that those here 'in the know' are not vocally correcting the 'news media' butchery of the truth.
Yes, we know it's BS, but Joe Schmoe Voter does not. Through silence, we are letting the less informed be duped into electing someone who is willing to lie to get a job!
Would you hire someone if he claimed to have invented the internet? We're talking INTEGRITY here, not marketing. And just because the odds are overwhelming, does not mean we just shrug and say 'he's just trying to get elected'. Bull! We have a responsibility and an obligation, to ourselves and the world we want to live in, to speak up.
And since when have odds scared the likes of people that frequent/.??
It's not about getting something done by letting him take credit. This is not about us being diplomatic, as everyone exchanges a knowing wink. Most people don't know he's full of it, and they're the voting majority. If he's so blatant about bending the truth, Clinton has trained him well, and we're off to a bad start in 2000.
Linux is the product of a super-human intelligence - that of a large number of human intelligences. A super-human intelligence must have cpabilities greater than the average human; i.e. time travel. Stallman may be right - we are just behind schedule for sending Linux back in time to kill that 'other OS'..
I still feel pretty offended by the whole Gore thing. He invented the Internet. He's Open Source. He's just trying to get his techno-ignorant self into the minds of the cyber-demographic... Like our votes will make a difference? He's trying to appear to be cutting edge technoid, so the ignorant public will think that he's good for their internet experience?? Is that the tack?
It's almost as offensive as him slipping a "YO! Peace to my peeps!" into a speach, just to get into the 'boys'n'da'hood' demographic. I'm surprised he wasn't shown on TV at Easter, coloring eggs, just to get those valuable Christian Lithuanian votes.
Ford is releasing it's new sedan, the Penguin, as Open Source. The release will abide by the rules of the Ford Open Source Sharing Initiative License (FOSSIL)
Exxon gasoline (87 octane only, sorry, we have to make a living too) is due to be released Open Source in May. The release will by guided by Source Publicity International License.
Hood ice cream, vanilla and chocolate flavors, soon to be Open Source. In a move intended to cut off Hagen Daas from equity competition in the US, the flavors will be available under the Digital And Ingestible Redistribution lYcense.
Is it because it's a wearable computer - in which case, Alan Alda did a Nova show from MIT about this years ago; or is it because a bunch of high-schoolers did it - in which case people don't have enough faith in their teenagers. In either case, why is it news?
All that's needed is a notebook PC in a backpack, with a wireless LAN card and a PC cam. Hell, gimme $2000 and a CompUSA and I'll walk out of the store with a working one of these 'news-worthy' items.
I think you're definitelly right. My PDA travels with me and has become indispensable. I'd like it to talk to my cellphone, but not be integral with it - well, maybe that.
But we're definitely seeing the trend from mainframe to PC continuing from PC to invisible infrastructure.
Consider this: A thin Java console lives in an embedded system built into your kitchen counter, perhaps on the microwave console or the fridge door. It maintains the shopping lists and contents of your cupboards. It makes a list at the end of the week, and as you walk out the door, it sends it to your PDA.
As you shop and put things into your cart, the PDA reads the isle and item you are near (little electronic price tags on shelves - passively powered by an emitter in your cart) and cross-references your calendar to check for dinner dates, special occasions, and the dietary preferences and allergies of the people involved. It makes suggestions and issues warnings. "Your father is coming for his birthday dinner monday - likes porkchops, but is allergic to scallops".
When you check out, the payment is made electronically of course. Maybe we don't even need a clerk - only a bagger. And here's my favorite part... Those little 'invasion of privacy' discount cards that Stop&Shop has are actually useful. What you buy, and the rate at which you consume it is in your system (currently in PDA). You know what you're low on, and what you bought comes off the shopping list as you restock.
That's for shopping. At home, there's more transparent logic.
If you have a single can of cranberry sauce, in April, it doesn't hassle you for more. If it's late November, it'll remind you to get more. If you have a Jewish friend who is coming over, the system will pull a recipe, based on the contents of your fridge and cupboard, for something Kosher. Or you have a vegeratian friend. This thing should know your friends, your habits, their habits... It should be global, not personal or domestic.
When the dinner date is made (to extend the context) the backchannel of the conversation exchanges schedules and dining preference. As you become more familiar with someone, you release more and more pertinent information. If you're close friends, you share vacation schedules, cultural and entertainment habits, and medical histories, just in case.
Let's go a little further: Your car fails to start in the morning. An email is automatically sent to your mechanic and an appointment is made in cross ref to their shop schedule. An email is dispatched to work informing them when you'll be in and why you're late (authenticated so they know you're not cutting out to see Phantom Menace) and you either go back to bed for a few hours, or by the time you walk back in from the garage, your PC is online and logged into work. You're telecommuting today.
Wanna go on a trip? Hmm, 3rd week in August looks good. You make the personal arrangement with the spouse and inform the PC. Guess what? By lunch time, a flight, hotel and itinerary are all booked, according to your defined specs for cost, convenience and personal quirks.. And you know what? Since you've got an allergy to papaya, that's not on the menu. And it's only April.
It's a nice dream. But it's not unrealistic. ATMs are pretty ubiquitous at this point, and computer technology is disappearing fast into the infrastructure. What we're looking at is a future of distributed systems and intelligent agents that will facilitate our lives by taking the mundane details off of our minds. The same way that the car and highway made travel plans easier to make. The same way that the telephone reduced interpersonal communication from the artform and drudgery of ink to a completely thoughtless act.
Alfred North Whitehead said that: It is a profundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like calvary charges in a battle -- they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
The problem with these things is that they're not all they're cracked up to be. Take the recent trend in combining office peripherals for example.
You get a printer/scanner/fax/copier and you think you're getting a great deal. But, you're not really getting the functionality you want. The lesser models require that they be connected to a running computer to send and receive a fax, many need to go thru the PC to send a fax or make a copy, because these features depend on the scanner, for which the driver is on the PC.
This is like requiring the oven appliance to heat up before making toast.
And if a component dies, guess what? You're S.O.L. until it gets shipped back to you, post repair. (I can't wait 4 to 6 weeks to print something...) Bad mojo.
Now, software is different, but I still have my doubts about the PC. Personally, I think that the storage vs memory vs display vs multimedia are all separate components - that happen to be in a single box. I can upgrade, replace and tweak any and all of them.
The era of the PC as a multipurpose device came (and went) with things like the Mac (who sanctioned the original article for this thread) and 'closed' PCs like Packard Bell... These companies cater to people whose head hurts from the complexity of a separate case and monitor.
Me, I'll keep my AGP, external drives, hot-swap PC cards (why didn't these even make it on the desktop?) and fsck the case.
How doesn't slashdot ever get slashdotted??? Is it a secret illuminati or masonic conspiracy, or does Rob just have better hardware then everyone else? Or is it Perl?:)
Interesting point. Where is the list (I'm sure it's long) of bugs present in M$ e-Comm related software? Anything from FrontPage to ISS and MTS.
If these, in the presence of nominal conditions, can be shown (or even more effectively MADE) to cause serious financial (or even public opinion) losses to major corporations, M$ would find themselves under tangible pressure to do right.
I certainly hope that that lawsuit went nowhere. It would set a very dangerous precedent. If a gun maker were to be held liable for murders and accidents involving their product, where would it end?
Would Anheuser-Busch and Ford be defendants along with the drunk driver?
And you're right. It's the populace that is to blame. The legal maneuverings are, after all, intended to benefit the public (or am I totally naive, and it's all the lawyer's fault?). The idea that someone would have the stones to sue MacDonalds for having doused their own crotch with scaling coffee, is ludicrous. These people should not only be laughed out of court, they should (as per British rules) be made to refund the cost of frivilous lawsuit. Further, they should be kept from breeding more idiots.
However, there is some strength to the argument that M$ is at fault, at least in part. Tech-minded people have known for a long time, that M$ Office is swiss cheese, security-wise. This has been said elsewhere in this forum numerous times. M$, IMHO, has shirked the responsibility of keeping the PAYING public informed about the shortcomings of their product. Mind you, they are not obligated to fix it, it is their product to develop as they will. But, they have the moral obligation (uh-oh! How objective can THAT be?) to keep their customers aware.
Here Ford has them beat hands down. If something more than nominal rust appears on a tranny-mount, they issue a recall and have it replaced free of charge. (Just got a notice regarding my father's Lincoln) And you can't argue cost, since M$ is making money hand over fist, and their production costs for a patch are nil.
What the software industry needs is a vocal watchdog organization to point and yell each time the emperor streaks the town square. Maybe some of the primus mobilae of OSS could knock heads together and propose a Software Underwriters Association?
There, all the braindead users who don't know their own computers should be gone now...
If you run a program you do not know, prepare for a big surprise. It's a feature of your computer to do things. Learn your appliance.
It's a shame that people who actually NEED the "Do not use heair dryer while bathing" warning labels are allowed to own a computer, or a car, or God forbid, even a gun...
Maybe if we were not so bent on protecting the public from it's own stupidity, the average IQ would rise in tandem with the resolution of the overpopulation problem.
There was a time when a virus was a piece of art. Not that I condone malicious virus programming, but it required hacking (the pleasant version) skills to do. You had to hand assemble the beastie, squeeze nifty little features into a few dozen bytes. Now Joe Shmoe can drag, drop, click and send. My question is, what happened to the artists? Did they all turn to OSS, for the satisfaction of being able to put their name on their work?
Yes, writing a virus and releasing it into the wild, is a bad, bad thing. Bad boy Davy, go stand in the corner and don't ever do it again...
But does he really deserve this level of persecution? I don't think so. The man has been set upon by rabid dogs, half of them ignorant of the technology involved, and the reset trained by the Federal government to be heavy-handed and vicious. Security and conformity enforcement through intimidation works. Da Comrade!
The effect of what he did, intentions aside, is not far removed from from the Morris Worm. Yes, Morris was prosecuted and punished, but even the government admits that it was a curiosity that ran away from a controlled environment. It's not like this guy (Smith) is Geoffrey freakin Dahmer. He's a geek, who for one reason or another, wrote an annoying bug. Sure, it touched many computers, but what DAMAGE did it really do?? It got a lot of IT people money for systems improvements, it gave many anti-virus softwares welcome exposure. It was a boon, and it got attention. Who got hurt?
Dave Smith. He will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, by an ignorant, ham-handed mechanism that's been eager to sink it's teeth into a non-celebrity, just to show that you can't fight city hall, even with a computer.
"Oooohh!!! Scary computer people will launch nuclear missles with a virus!" IMHO that bespeaks badly of the federal and military security, not the crackers who are being compared to the John Gacy's of the Internet.
As for those here who claim that M$ should bear some of the burden for this Melissa fiasco, just because their cheesy software was used to make it happen.. BOLLOCKS! If I go and shoot somone, who in their right mind would blame Smith and Wesson?? What a brilliant defense for Dahmer that would have been: "Your honor, it wasn't really all MY fault, if Ginsu didn't make such sharp knives I would have never been able to eat that Thai boy."
The argument that the MacOS has an Interface while KDE or Windows are shells does not hold either. The Mac has an INTEGRATED graphical interface. KDE is an interface, so is a keyboard, the screen, a cranial implant... Wether the interface comes with icons and windows as part of the OS, or layered on top of a CLI, makes no usability difference, does it?
KCD, GNOME, etc are shells - true. They are layered on top of X, the standard graphical interface to unix, which talks to the OS just as all the various CLIs do. The argument is purely about the definition of the term.
If there was a ubiquitous, common 'interface' to Linux, I'm sure that the same argument could be had between software types and purists. The latter would argue that it's not really an interface to the computer, but rather to the software, and who would claim that it should be embedded in hardware - much as you claim that it's not an 'interface' simply because it is not integral to the OS. A purist could make the argument that the human 'interface' to the machine should be uniform, regardless of the hardware or software. We should be able to walk up to a Cray, and SGI, and HP or a PC and interact with a standard interface.
As I recall from recent discussions, one goal in the Linux kernel is to keep the actual OS interface small and clean. We layer the MMI 'interfaces' on that standard, and thanks to the clenliness of it, we have a choice of 'interfaces' to place between ourselves and the machine.
So the issue is really about keeping the interfaces between the layers standard. Sounds like a sound programming practice. It would be really nice to be able to run any application on any GUI on any OS on any hardware. Now, how do we get there?
Sharing and distributing knowledge and means of achievement does indeed improve the lot of the whole community. Sharing is for the common good.
But there is an additional benefit to sharing. The distribution of the work among the individuals who make up the community, allows for bigger work to be done. This is certainly not an OSS concept, since H. Ford brought it to criticality in his assembly lines, but it does take on a new meaning in the 'gift culture'.
We are able to accomplish great things, and improve the common lot of our community by contributing small and individually insignificant bits of labour to the communal magnum opus.
Linus could never have written Linux (as it is) on his own. It's beyond human (single) capability. A single video driver for Linux, sans Linux, benefits no one - serving only as a programming etude to the author.
Given small, individual sized, contributions, pooled together for the common good and driven by genuine interest and honest good will, the 'gift cultire' is capable of performing industrial scope work through the sharing of experience and the completely organic and non-administated division of labor.
"I always knew they ran a little hot. "See where overclocking will get you?!?! "I accept no responsibility for Apples inability to innovate in such a competitive market - B.G. "Smoke colored iMacs for subtle yet distinct CEO offices. "They're selling like hot-cakes, and they smell a bit like'em too...
Slashdot Mirror
So Red Hat is going to produce Real World next season? We get to hear about their failed relationships, watch them play scavenger hunt games on the Internet and chicken out of jumping out of an airplane??
What geek wants to take time out of their day to pose for photographs and run Baywatch style on the beach??
Red Hat lost it. Are they trying to make geekdom glamorous and comparable to a permanent Spring Break?? What's the gimmick?
I like to state things in the extreme, and so I often misrepresent the point I'm trying to make. I think this is one of thosde cases.
No, a company wouldn't 'sue' a software vendor if the product failed - unless the vendor gave explicit assurance that such a failure would not happen.
When I exaggerate by saying 'sue', I intend for that to mean 'to hold accountable'. This does not neccesarily mean, to have the ability to take losses out of the vendor's hide, but to have some leverage in negotiations and subsequent business dealings.
As one tack pointed out, support contracts provide this sort of accountability. There is not such an animal with Linux. Red Hat may offer support, but it just does not waft the same, does it?
Because there is a long tradition of charging money for it.
Linux, for all it's strengths, is free, and thereby not a profit generating product. With companies such as HP and Intel investing in RedHat, they're getting on the good side of future UNInix developers, who will abandon Linux for a paycheck. They're willing to invest in a free unix as a proof of concept for technologies to be rolled into an 'industrial strength' unix later, complete with support from all the big names in the industry.
To them, Linux isn't really a contender, because end users have no time to learn it and deal with it's support model. Corporate clients NEED to have someone to sue if things go bad. So, these guys are willing to sink some money into Linux development, first to flesh out the hirable talent, and second to get some ideas off the ground for free.
They have no problem with pumping some money into Linux, to keep a lively grass-roots testbed for ideas, and to foster goodwill with people who are more than willing to write those pesky device drivers. But let's not delude ourselves, these big corporations are in business to make money, by selling products and support. They didn't get all this money that they've invested in Linux by giving money to non-profit developers and hobbyists.
They still don't get it. They are so in the habit of selling software, that they're willing to reinvent the wheel to keep on doing it. Why, oh why, can't they just sell hardware and free software? Well, hardware, being the only source of profit, would get real expensive, real fast. And with all those brilliant programmers out there, optimizing free software for the existing hardware, who would want to buy new hardware??
Really, do we need Merced?
Point being, as long as software can be sold, it will be sold. And if Linux could unify unix, why can't they - with the added bonus of support, accountability and $$.
As I read more of the scored postings on /., I see how valuable the OSS approach is, and how everyone here prizes the openness of information, and the self-correcting nature of such development.
But, when it comes to politics, social issues and anything non-code, heads get stuck in the sand. It's disappointing, since even as a teen I held the view that "The Idea is the immortal virus". I forget who said it first, but I completely agree. Ideas evolve much like open source code. Bad ones are not propagated to the next revision, good ones are optimized and become programming cliches and near-dogma, but are never exempt from critique.
It is much like this with politics and news and facts. If they are not questioned, and the bad ones are not exposed for what they are, they become socio-political cruft that we'll have to deal with later. Not forcing politicians to be accountable for their claims is like advocating binary distributions of software, and then wondering why 50 people got an important document from you.
The problem is that all the people who buy into this media propaganda are too busy watching Ricky Lake to question anything they hear. The truth makes their head hurt, so they change the channel.
And somebody has to call him on it!
/.??
You are completely WRONG, oh prolific AC, in letting Gore take credit for something he did not do. It is setting a dangerous precedent, letting someone take credit for something they have no claim to - just because it doesn't hurt you.
Not speaking out and not informing the public, that the presidential heir-apparent is lying^H^H^H^H^Hmisrepresenting himself, is wrong. Claiming that he (et al) is responsible for the state of the internet is like saying that I (et al) am responsible for the health of the US economy. I go shopping now and again, infusing cash into the system, therefore I claim responsibility for the 10k DOW!!!
I am appalled (dons Johnny Cochran mask) and chagrinned that the informed minority is willing to stand by while another professional politician makes a mockery of the facts. And I am further dismayed and even shocked, that those here 'in the know' are not vocally correcting the 'news media' butchery of the truth.
Yes, we know it's BS, but Joe Schmoe Voter does not. Through silence, we are letting the less informed be duped into electing someone who is willing to lie to get a job!
Would you hire someone if he claimed to have invented the internet? We're talking INTEGRITY here, not marketing. And just because the odds are overwhelming, does not mean we just shrug and say 'he's just trying to get elected'. Bull! We have a responsibility and an obligation, to ourselves and the world we want to live in, to speak up.
And since when have odds scared the likes of people that frequent
It's not about getting something done by letting him take credit. This is not about us being diplomatic, as everyone exchanges a knowing wink. Most people don't know he's full of it, and they're the voting majority. If he's so blatant about bending the truth, Clinton has trained him well, and we're off to a bad start in 2000.
Linux is the product of a super-human intelligence - that of a large number of human intelligences.
A super-human intelligence must have cpabilities greater than the average human; i.e. time travel.
Stallman may be right - we are just behind schedule for sending Linux back in time to kill that 'other OS'..
I'll be baaack!
Have they ANY idea that it's not a handle?
I still feel pretty offended by the whole Gore thing. He invented the Internet. He's Open Source.
He's just trying to get his techno-ignorant self into the minds of the cyber-demographic... Like our votes will make a difference? He's trying to appear to be cutting edge technoid, so the ignorant public will think that he's good for their internet experience?? Is that the tack?
It's almost as offensive as him slipping a "YO! Peace to my peeps!" into a speach, just to get into the 'boys'n'da'hood' demographic. I'm surprised he wasn't shown on TV at Easter, coloring eggs, just to get those valuable Christian Lithuanian votes.
Poser!
Since OSS is supported by people who are interested in it, here's a chance for the community to show M$ how valuable it's software really is.
Nobody download ANY of it. Let it rot.
T H I S J U S T I N ! ! !
Ford is releasing it's new sedan, the Penguin, as Open Source. The release will abide by the rules of the Ford Open Source Sharing Initiative License (FOSSIL)
Exxon gasoline (87 octane only, sorry, we have to make a living too) is due to be released Open Source in May. The release will by guided by Source Publicity International License.
Hood ice cream, vanilla and chocolate flavors, soon to be Open Source. In a move intended to cut off Hagen Daas from equity competition in the US, the flavors will be available under the Digital And Ingestible Redistribution lYcense.
I remember Civ, it was the best game of it's time - at least for resource managers. I'd love to see it again.
I'm running mine with 80MB, so there you go.
Actually, it's a 32 bit chip, with 32 bit registers, so it can address (grind, grind, grind) 4294967295 bytes - 4 GB.
The mainboard most likely has a 64MB limit, but that sounds low for a P5 board...
NT imposes a 2GB limit on address space for the system, and 2GB for an application - but that's a different ball of wax entirely (virch mem issues)
Is it because it's a wearable computer - in which case, Alan Alda did a Nova show from MIT about this years ago; or is it because a bunch of high-schoolers did it - in which case people don't have enough faith in their teenagers. In either case, why is it news?
All that's needed is a notebook PC in a backpack, with a wireless LAN card and a PC cam. Hell, gimme $2000 and a CompUSA and I'll walk out of the store with a working one of these 'news-worthy' items.
Now, if someone were to.. Oh nevermind!
Nuff said I think. :)
The NC was an instance of a concept. Now we wait for somoene to make one that actually works.
Maybe 3Com?
I think you're definitelly right. My PDA travels with me and has become indispensable. I'd like it to talk to my cellphone, but not be integral with it - well, maybe that.
But we're definitely seeing the trend from mainframe to PC continuing from PC to invisible infrastructure.
Consider this: A thin Java console lives in an embedded system built into your kitchen counter, perhaps on the microwave console or the fridge door. It maintains the shopping lists and contents of your cupboards. It makes a list at the end of the week, and as you walk out the door, it sends it to your PDA.
As you shop and put things into your cart, the PDA reads the isle and item you are near (little electronic price tags on shelves - passively powered by an emitter in your cart) and cross-references your calendar to check for dinner dates, special occasions, and the dietary preferences and allergies of the people involved. It makes suggestions and issues warnings. "Your father is coming for his birthday dinner monday - likes porkchops, but is allergic to scallops".
When you check out, the payment is made electronically of course. Maybe we don't even need a clerk - only a bagger. And here's my favorite part... Those little 'invasion of privacy' discount cards that Stop&Shop has are actually useful. What you buy, and the rate at which you consume it is in your system (currently in PDA). You know what you're low on, and what you bought comes off the shopping list as you restock.
That's for shopping. At home, there's more transparent logic.
If you have a single can of cranberry sauce, in April, it doesn't hassle you for more. If it's late November, it'll remind you to get more. If you have a Jewish friend who is coming over, the system will pull a recipe, based on the contents of your fridge and cupboard, for something Kosher. Or you have a vegeratian friend. This thing should know your friends, your habits, their habits... It should be global, not personal or domestic.
When the dinner date is made (to extend the context) the backchannel of the conversation exchanges schedules and dining preference. As you become more familiar with someone, you release more and more pertinent information. If you're close friends, you share vacation schedules, cultural and entertainment habits, and medical histories, just in case.
Let's go a little further: Your car fails to start in the morning. An email is automatically sent to your mechanic and an appointment is made in cross ref to their shop schedule. An email is dispatched to work informing them when you'll be in and why you're late (authenticated so they know you're not cutting out to see Phantom Menace) and you either go back to bed for a few hours, or by the time you walk back in from the garage, your PC is online and logged into work. You're telecommuting today.
Wanna go on a trip? Hmm, 3rd week in August looks good. You make the personal arrangement with the spouse and inform the PC. Guess what? By lunch time, a flight, hotel and itinerary are all booked, according to your defined specs for cost, convenience and personal quirks.. And you know what? Since you've got an allergy to papaya, that's not on the menu. And it's only April.
It's a nice dream. But it's not unrealistic. ATMs are pretty ubiquitous at this point, and computer technology is disappearing fast into the infrastructure. What we're looking at is a future of distributed systems and intelligent agents that will facilitate our lives by taking the mundane details off of our minds. The same way that the car and highway made travel plans easier to make. The same way that the telephone reduced interpersonal communication from the artform and drudgery of ink to a completely thoughtless act.
Alfred North Whitehead said that:
It is a profundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like calvary charges in a battle -- they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.
The problem with these things is that they're not all they're cracked up to be. Take the recent trend in combining office peripherals for example.
You get a printer/scanner/fax/copier and you think you're getting a great deal. But, you're not really getting the functionality you want. The lesser models require that they be connected to a running computer to send and receive a fax, many need to go thru the PC to send a fax or make a copy, because these features depend on the scanner, for which the driver is on the PC.
This is like requiring the oven appliance to heat up before making toast.
And if a component dies, guess what? You're S.O.L. until it gets shipped back to you, post repair. (I can't wait 4 to 6 weeks to print something...) Bad mojo.
Now, software is different, but I still have my doubts about the PC. Personally, I think that the storage vs memory vs display vs multimedia are all separate components - that happen to be in a single box. I can upgrade, replace and tweak any and all of them.
The era of the PC as a multipurpose device came (and went) with things like the Mac (who sanctioned the original article for this thread) and 'closed' PCs like Packard Bell...
These companies cater to people whose head hurts from the complexity of a separate case and monitor.
Me, I'll keep my AGP, external drives, hot-swap PC cards (why didn't these even make it on the desktop?) and fsck the case.
It's against child labor laws.
/.ed already... ???
:)
It's
How doesn't slashdot ever get slashdotted??? Is it a secret illuminati or masonic conspiracy, or does Rob just have better hardware then everyone else? Or is it Perl?
Interesting point. Where is the list (I'm sure it's long) of bugs present in M$ e-Comm related software? Anything from FrontPage to ISS and MTS.
If these, in the presence of nominal conditions, can be shown (or even more effectively MADE) to cause serious financial (or even public opinion) losses to major corporations, M$ would find themselves under tangible pressure to do right.
I certainly hope that that lawsuit went nowhere. It would set a very dangerous precedent. If a gun maker were to be held liable for murders and accidents involving their product, where would it end?
Would Anheuser-Busch and Ford be defendants along with the drunk driver?
And you're right. It's the populace that is to blame. The legal maneuverings are, after all, intended to benefit the public (or am I totally naive, and it's all the lawyer's fault?). The idea that someone would have the stones to sue MacDonalds for having doused their own crotch with scaling coffee, is ludicrous. These people should not only be laughed out of court, they should (as per British rules) be made to refund the cost of frivilous lawsuit. Further, they should be kept from breeding more idiots.
However, there is some strength to the argument that M$ is at fault, at least in part. Tech-minded people have known for a long time, that M$ Office is swiss cheese, security-wise. This has been said elsewhere in this forum numerous times. M$, IMHO, has shirked the responsibility of keeping the PAYING public informed about the shortcomings of their product. Mind you, they are not obligated to fix it, it is their product to develop as they will. But, they have the moral obligation (uh-oh! How objective can THAT be?) to keep their customers aware.
Here Ford has them beat hands down. If something more than nominal rust appears on a tranny-mount, they issue a recall and have it replaced free of charge. (Just got a notice regarding my father's Lincoln) And you can't argue cost, since M$ is making money hand over fist, and their production costs for a patch are nil.
What the software industry needs is a vocal watchdog organization to point and yell each time the emperor streaks the town square. Maybe some of the primus mobilae of OSS could knock heads together and propose a Software Underwriters Association?
The temperature in the Abyss is a balmy 140 degrees Fahrenheit, with a 98% relative humidity. This trend is expected to continue.
In other news, pigs have as of yet NOT sprouted wings, and monkeys are not about to fly out of my butt.
But we can always hope.
Press ALT+F4 now to test your IQ.
There, all the braindead users who don't know their own computers should be gone now...
If you run a program you do not know, prepare for a big surprise. It's a feature of your computer to do things. Learn your appliance.
It's a shame that people who actually NEED the "Do not use heair dryer while bathing" warning labels are allowed to own a computer, or a car, or God forbid, even a gun...
Maybe if we were not so bent on protecting the public from it's own stupidity, the average IQ would rise in tandem with the resolution of the overpopulation problem.
There was a time when a virus was a piece of art. Not that I condone malicious virus programming, but it required hacking (the pleasant version) skills to do. You had to hand assemble the beastie, squeeze nifty little features into a few dozen bytes. Now Joe Shmoe can drag, drop, click and send. My question is, what happened to the artists? Did they all turn to OSS, for the satisfaction of being able to put their name on their work?
Yes, writing a virus and releasing it into the wild, is a bad, bad thing. Bad boy Davy, go stand in the corner and don't ever do it again...
But does he really deserve this level of persecution? I don't think so. The man has been set upon by rabid dogs, half of them ignorant of the technology involved, and the reset trained by the Federal government to be heavy-handed and vicious. Security and conformity enforcement through intimidation works. Da Comrade!
The effect of what he did, intentions aside, is not far removed from from the Morris Worm. Yes, Morris was prosecuted and punished, but even the government admits that it was a curiosity that ran away from a controlled environment. It's not like this guy (Smith) is Geoffrey freakin Dahmer. He's a geek, who for one reason or another, wrote an annoying bug. Sure, it touched many computers, but what DAMAGE did it really do?? It got a lot of IT people money for systems improvements, it gave many anti-virus softwares welcome exposure. It was a boon, and it got attention. Who got hurt?
Dave Smith. He will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, by an ignorant, ham-handed mechanism that's been eager to sink it's teeth into a non-celebrity, just to show that you can't fight city hall, even with a computer.
"Oooohh!!! Scary computer people will launch nuclear missles with a virus!" IMHO that bespeaks badly of the federal and military security, not the crackers who are being compared to the John Gacy's of the Internet.
As for those here who claim that M$ should bear some of the burden for this Melissa fiasco, just because their cheesy software was used to make it happen.. BOLLOCKS! If I go and shoot somone, who in their right mind would blame Smith and Wesson?? What a brilliant defense for Dahmer that would have been: "Your honor, it wasn't really all MY fault, if Ginsu didn't make such sharp knives I would have never been able to eat that Thai boy."
Feh!
The argument that the MacOS has an Interface while KDE or Windows are shells does not hold either.
The Mac has an INTEGRATED graphical interface. KDE is an interface, so is a keyboard, the screen, a cranial implant... Wether the interface comes with icons and windows as part of the OS, or layered on top of a CLI, makes no usability difference, does it?
KCD, GNOME, etc are shells - true. They are layered on top of X, the standard graphical interface to unix, which talks to the OS just as all the various CLIs do. The argument is purely about the definition of the term.
If there was a ubiquitous, common 'interface' to Linux, I'm sure that the same argument could be had between software types and purists. The latter would argue that it's not really an interface to the computer, but rather to the software, and who would claim that it should be embedded in hardware - much as you claim that it's not an 'interface' simply because it is not integral to the OS. A purist could make the argument that the human 'interface' to the machine should be uniform, regardless of the hardware or software. We should be able to walk up to a Cray, and SGI, and HP or a PC and interact with a standard interface.
As I recall from recent discussions, one goal in the Linux kernel is to keep the actual OS interface small and clean. We layer the MMI 'interfaces' on that standard, and thanks to the clenliness of it, we have a choice of 'interfaces' to place between ourselves and the machine.
So the issue is really about keeping the interfaces between the layers standard. Sounds like a sound programming practice. It would be really nice to be able to run any application on any GUI on any OS on any hardware. Now, how do we get there?
To follow and share the idea further:
Sharing and distributing knowledge and means of achievement does indeed improve the lot of the whole community. Sharing is for the common good.
But there is an additional benefit to sharing. The distribution of the work among the individuals who make up the community, allows for bigger work to be done. This is certainly not an OSS concept, since H. Ford brought it to criticality in his assembly lines, but it does take on a new meaning in the 'gift culture'.
We are able to accomplish great things, and improve the common lot of our community by contributing small and individually insignificant bits of labour to the communal magnum opus.
Linus could never have written Linux (as it is) on his own. It's beyond human (single) capability. A single video driver for Linux, sans Linux, benefits no one - serving only as a programming etude to the author.
Given small, individual sized, contributions, pooled together for the common good and driven by genuine interest and honest good will, the 'gift cultire' is capable of performing industrial scope work through the sharing of experience and the completely organic and non-administated division of labor.
Oh the humor of it all, and on a Monday at that!
"I always knew they ran a little hot.
"See where overclocking will get you?!?!
"I accept no responsibility for Apples inability to innovate in such a competitive market - B.G.
"Smoke colored iMacs for subtle yet distinct CEO offices.
"They're selling like hot-cakes, and they smell a bit like'em too...
Thank you, thank you.. I'm here all week.