I think you're seriously, massively, overestimating the chances! Discworld author Terry Pratchett says that million-to-one chances come up nine times out of ten. While that's an entertainingly flawed equation in a humorous fantasy series, in this case, I think the difference between one-out-of-a-million and nine-out-of-ten is so small compared to the real odds that they might as well be considered equivalent.:)
> He wasn't forcing you to use OO. He was forcing you to use Open Document Format
Actually, he wasn't trying to force YOU to use anything! He was trying to force the Mass. gov't to use open, cross-platform, multi-vendor formats for their public documents! (Note the plural in "formats"--pdf and html are also on the list.) Private citizens creating their own documents would be free to continue using XYWrite or VisiCalc or whatever other stupid, proprietary formats they want their data to become obsolete in.
> As more and more people use digital cameras and then PhotoShop (or other programs) the 'art' of photography goes away
Ok, so it was a little before my time, but I seem to remember hearing that the whole idea that photography could even be an art form was rejected at first, especially by painters. Frankly, while I'm willing to concede that photography most certainly can be art, it seems to me that digital image manipulation provides at least as much, and possibly far more, room for artistic expression.
Seems to me like there's a bit of poetic justice here. (Is poetic justice a form of art?) I bet there's a bunch of dead painters who would (if they could) be rolling around laughing at the irony of a photographer complaining about people who take advantage of technology to make their art "too easily".:)
Indeed, and from my observations (mainly on bt.etree.org, which has legally downloadable music and only legally downloadable music), the two most popular clients are Azureus and BitTornado, not necessarily in that order. I don't know if there's something about live music fans (or jam-band fans) that makes them more likely to choose BitTornado, but it seems unlikely. So, by snubbing BitTornado, they not only snubbed my favorite (which I'm used to), but, apparently, one of the most popular clients out there.
BTW, I'm currently offering the New Orleans Radiators' New Years Eve show; anyone who likes (or thinks they might like) some New-Orleans-flavored classic-rock/swamp-pop should check it out here. These guys aren't exactly the RIAA's darlings--they're no pretty-boy pop-stars--but they've been one of America's best party bands for over a quarter of a century, and show no signs of slowing down. And they strongly support their fans' rights to tape and trade their concerts.
> "Do leaks of upcoming products really hurt sales of those products?"
Well, in my case, the chance that I would buy the product has gone from zero to zero, so I would say no. The sales have not been affected at all.
> "Do these kind of lawsuits damage the companies initiating them more than they help?"
Well, in my case, the chance that I would buy the product has gone from zero to zero, so I would say no. The company has not been affected at all.
Sorry, couldn't resist.:)
In the general case, yes, leaks CAN hurt, if it causes people to hold off on current purchases while they wait for the next release with the new features. This is known as the "Osborne effect," in honor of computer pioneer Adam Osborne, who apparently destroyed his own company by announcing "next version" features too early. As for the second question, well, that's going to have to be judged on a case-by-case basis. Trying to make it into a simple "yes or no" question is naive and silly.
Um, David Boies and co. have very little to worry about as far as career preservation goes. This is the man and company who represented the DoJ in DoJ v Microsoft, who represented Napster in RIAA v Napster, who represented Al Gore in Bush v Gore. Their reputation is already made, or they wouldn't have had those cases, and David is old and near retirement in any case. He also likes to take difficult cases, even when the chance of success is low, and this is well known, so another loss isn't going to harm his repuation or his company's all that much. At least, not among the general public. Among techies, his repuation was already destroyed by his willingness to accept The SCO Group as a client, and, in fact, doing a bad job for them might be his only chance to salvage any of that reputation!:)
Take heart. The company you're thinking of with such nostalgia is the Santa Cruz Operation, and their only involvement in this whole mess is that they sold their UNIX division (and the trademark "SCO UNIX") to a Linux vendor named Caldera a few years back. The Santa Cruz Operation then renamed itself to "Tarantella", and ended up being bought by Sun. Caldera, on the other hand, decided to rename themselves as "The SCO Group" and started suing everyone in sight when they couldn't come up with any other way to make money. Note that there is no "Santa Cruz" in their name. "SCO" is no longer an abbreviation; it's simply a name.
The Santa Cruz Operation was a California company (based, unsuprisingly, in Santa Cruz, California, where I lived for several years). They had a twenty-five year run, which is pretty good in this volatile industry. The SCO Group, on the other hand, is, and always has been, a Utah-based company, has only been around for about a decade, and seems unlikely to see a second.
> Who cares about the pagerank of the submitter's lame-o site?
Well, duh! Obviously, a LOT of people care, or we wouldn't be having this discussion! I know you may find this hard to believe, but some people actually find Google to be a useful tool, and are bothered by those who attempt to make it less useful! Frankly, if slashdot fell off the face of the earth tomorrow, I would be a little bummed, but life would go on. But if Google fell off the face of the earth tomorrow, or merely just stopped returning useful results, I would be seriously screwed!
Maybe you don't think morality should be an issue here, but a lot of people do--moral issues drive a lot of people's involvement with free/open source software. And to many people (including me), this is a moral issue. **BB is trying to make the world just a tiny, tiny bit worse for millions of people (by messing up pagerank very slightly) just to line his own pockets. It's true that in the grand scheme of things, this is a very minor issue, but it still seems immoral to many of us.
So, fact is, a lot of people DO care, and think they have a good reason to care. Which in turn means that Taco HAS to care, because he's potentially losing paying subscribers. Hey, market forces at work, whee!:)
Anyway, fortunately, I'm posting this after Taco's second update, and I'm overjoyed to see that he's decided to use nofollow. Which, frankly, was all I was ever hoping for. And just in the nick of time, as far as I'm concerned, because, despite the fact that I've been reading and enjoying slashdot on a regular basis for many, many years, I was seriously starting to wonder if I could, in good conscience, keep reading. Especially since it is, at least in my opinion, little more than light entertainment.
> "[...] the drive is primarily designed to operate at full speed."
That is, indeed, one important factor. The other important factor (the one grandparent poster was referring to) is that slower speeds allow the laser more time to burn each bit, and therefore each bit gets burned more clearly. This suggests (and my own small bit of empirical evidence tends to confirm) that the reliability curve will start high, drop off slowly as the speed rises, and then shoot back up as the drive finally reaches full speed. And indeed, with my own (admittedly low-end) drive, I have had no problems with discs burned at speeds up to 8x, and I have had no problems with discs burned at full speed (56x), but I have had problems with discs burned at speeds between 8x and 56x.
Since I have a low-end drive, I don't completely trust the full-speed calibration, and so I tend to use 4x or 8x for stuff I really care about, and 56x for stuff that's more easily replaceable.
> I actually was around before Microsoft seriously entered the computing market.
Me too! In fact, I was around before MS entered the computing market, period.
> I remember computers costing $10k (the Apple Lisa).
And you can still spend that (or many times that) if you want. And there were computers that only cost a couple of hundred on the market at the same time. As there are now. So whatcherpoint?
> I remember dozens of machines with no interoperability (TI 99/4, Atari, TRS 80, Exidy Sorcerer, Apple...)
Yup, those were the cheap ones. And I was writing cross-platform apps for those machines with supposedly "no interoperability" at the time! And we did it basically the same way it's done today, with compilers to hide CPU differences, and libraries to hide other system differences. Sure, the overheads associated with cross-platform work made it a non-starter for, say, video games, but for business apps and such, it was clearly, even at the time, the wave of the future.
> Microsoft, love it or hate it, established a defacto standard.
No, IBM established a defacto standard. And, in the process, managed to kill of a lot of the existing market for cross-platform support (anyone remember UCSD Pascal or Fig-Forth?), and, arguably, set the industry back by a decade or more. Microsoft just happened to be lucky enough to be in a position where they were able to hijack the standards created by IBM. People didn't go with Microsoft because it was better (or even very good); they went with Microsoft because it was "IBM-PC compatible".
And, in fact, by the time the PC came along, the small business computing market had already pretty much standardized on CP/M, and Digital Research was already looking at porting CP/M to a new generation of sixteen-bit chips. All the indicators, at the time (before MS came along), were pointing clearly in the direction of cheaper, more powerful computers with more standardized interfaces and APIs. What bucket you were hiding under to believe otherwise I can't imagine!
> Every vendor back in the '80s was desperately trying to steal their piece of market share, and the concept of open common standards was effectively non-existent.
Complete, utter hogwash! How many vendors were supporting CP/M at the time? How many were supporting Unix? Dozens, if not hundreds! I call shenanigans! We even bought one of those Apple Lisa's you mentioned around that time, but we didn't buy it to run LisaOS (or whatever it was called)--we bought it to run BSD! Gee, there was already a FREE cross-platform OS even way back then! Kinda makes you go "hmm", doesn't it?
> As far as Gates' generosity being a "new" thing...no, its not.
No, but Gates' personal generosity towards humanity in general has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with Microsoft's role as an evil, predatory monopoly! My feelings for BG are completely separate from my feelings for MS, and my feelings for MS are that I haven't used any of their software since '98, and hope to never do so again.
I'm no structural engineer, but I know that concrete is extremely rigid--this is why steel-reinforced concrete is used in construction. The steel is more flexible, and helps hold together the concrete even when it cracks under stress. And I know that something very rigid is excellent at transmitting vibrations. So "seeing" through twelve inches of concrete (even reinforced concrete) should be much, much easier than "seeing" through, say, a sandwich of two five-inch reinforced concrete walls with a layer of something more flexible (e.g. rubber) between. As long as the two rigid layers are completely separate, there should be little or no transmission between them. I bet someone who was a structural engineer would be able to come up with a reliable way to defeat this (without sacrificing safety) in fairly short order.
It's a neat idea, though, and I hope it finds applications in (as others have suggested) search-and-rescue and elsewhere.
> The first sentence of the question says it all: Microsoft dominates the desktop.
Indeed! And, in fact, the desktop is the only place they were ever officially judged to have a monopoly! (They haven't been investigated for their control of the office suite or office suite component markets--yet!) Thus, the article's comments about web servers and supercomputers are irrelevant. Ditto for the comments about gaming consoles.
Also, there seems to be a lot of confusion about the difference between the LEGAL definition of monopoly and the DICTIONARY definition of monopoly. In the US at least, the legal definition of monopoly is based on the Sherman Anti-Trust acts, and has to do with the degree of control of a market, NOT with absolute control! Basically the question under the Sherman act is, are free market forces in control of this market? Can MS still unilaterally make decisions that will absolutely force the market to move in certain directions? The answer is clearly yes. Is the pricing of their (desktop) systems controlled by market forces and competition? The answer is clearly no. In fact, the only reason there are even hints of competition still around is that some people chose the insane (from a strict free-market perspective) option of charging no money at all for their systems. In a truly free market, giving your product away for free would instantly result in such a large market share that you would probably end up under investigation for anti-trust abuse yourself. The fact that years of giving Linux (and BSD) away for free has barely caused a blip in the market just shows how strong MS's monopoly still is.
Another point many seem to miss: Microsoft's customers are primarily OEMs and resellers, NOT end-users! Sure, they have a few direct sales--you can go out and buy a retail copy of Windows at your neighborhood computer store--but the vast VAST majority of their sales are for preloads! So the question to ask is not: can Joe Schmoe go out and buy another OS for his machine; the question to ask is: can Dell or Gateway tell MS, "fuck off, we're going with your competitor from now on." Anyone who thinks the answer to this question is yes is invited to buy some shares in a little real-estate deal I have going on down in Florida.:)
Note that I would agree that some chinks have appeared in their armor, and MS is, perhaps, not quite AS dominant as they were a few years back, but they're still a LONG way from losing their monopoly control of the desktop market! A long, loo-o-o-ong way!
In fact, asking the question, "does MS still have a monopoly" of a bunch of techie nerds is just silly. This is a legal question, since we're dealing with the legal definition of a monopoly, and therefore, the appropriate person to ask would be a LAWYER! Asking Slashdot for a legal opinion makes about as much sense as...asking Slashdot for marital advice!:)
Oh come on--if they paid me $395, I'd probably be willing to wear one. Though I'm not sure why they'd want me to.
...Wait, you're saying they want ME to pay THEM?
Oh.
Nevermind.:)
Re:I guess it depends on where you came from
on
Java Is So 90s
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· Score: 1
> Objective-C, or as I like to refer to it, "C++ done right".
Of course, Smalltalk programmers might not agree--many of them think of Objective-C as "Smalltalk done wrong." We won't even mention what CLOS programmers might think of the whole notion.:)
Frankly, though, I think too much time is spent looking for the "perfect" language! C++ or Java objects are small and have little or no overhead, making them useful in places where you wouldn't consider using Smalltalk/ObjectiveC objects, but Smalltalk/ObjectiveC objects are far more flexible and versatile, making them easily useful for stuff that would be a nightmare to code or maintain in C++ or Java. One could try to go with a compromise like Objective-C++, but then you end up with two non-intersecting object heirarchies, which can be a problem in itself. Perl's overly-flexible syntax allows for serious abuse; Python's overly-restrictive syntax often forces awkward workarounds. Etc., etc., etc.
The fact is that nobody has designed a perfect language yet, and my suspicion is that nobody will. But until they do, I'll go on using different languages for different problem domains, and cursing when those domains brush up against each other.:)
So the question isn't "are they whores?"; that's a given. The question is, should they charge more for more unpleasant/degrading services. I think you'll find that your friendly neighborhood hooker charges more for anal than she does for a quick hand-job--why shouldn't these guys do the same?:)
Given that ATI and NVidia are both on my "do not buy under any circumstances[*]" list, it seems like a case of measuring the non-reflectivity of pots and kettles to me!:)
[*] Actually, there is a circumstance under which I'd consider them, but I refuse to hold my breath waiting for a full source-code release to either company's drivers or even a full spec release.
> Closed source produces a lot of good code, but you never get to see it (unless you work on it) becuase it stays closed.
Really? Because I have worked for a wide variety of closed-source companies over the last 25 years, and I have seen very little of this "good code" you refer to. One of the things that seriously attracted me to open source/free software in general was the much higher standards of coding that most of the developers seemed to adhere to.
Of course, maybe things have improved since I dumped Windows for once and for all back in '98, but somehow, I find it unlikely.
Hubble Site available as slashbox
on
Crab Nebula by Hubble
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· Score: 5, Informative
It's probably worth mentioning, in case people hadn't noticed, that you can--and I do--have the Hubble Site configured as a "Slashbox", so the current "image of interest" (at present, this Crab Nebula mozaic) will appear as a small image on the Slashdot front page. I've noticed (and grabbed) numerous images this way. Note that this only works, as far as I know, if you have a named account--but you don't need a subscription. Just go to Preferences, click on "Homepage", go down to the "Customize Slashboxes" section, and put a checkmark next to "Hubble Site". You'll be glad you did.
(At least, I assume you'll be glad you did, since, otherwise, why are you bothering to read the discussions about this article in the first place?):)
Actually, lots of people will: there are certain people who will use it specifically because IE lacks support for it. However, as long as IE lacks support, there is no danger that it will be used for ads! The minute it gets added to IE, it's going to have to be added to adblocker as well.
> "Slackware, for instance, had the first 'packages' as we'd recognize them."
No, actually, the packages predate the distributions -- I used to download individual packages off of funet.fi, back in the very early days when you still needed a Minix boot floppy to run fdisk and mkfs for Linux. The first "distro" was SLS, and it simply tried to provide a little overall organization for the steadily growing mass of packages that already existed. And Debian didn't "fix the flaws in Slackware's original model" because A) it wasn't "Slackware's model", it was simply the standard model that everyone used at the time (but, if anything, it was SLS's model), and B) Slackware and Debian were founded at basically the same time, which makes it hard to claim that Debian was influenced by Slackware in any way, since Slackware didn't exist back then! Of course, Slackware went from non-existence to 1.0 status in almost no time, since it relied on pre-existing technologies, while Debian took several years to reach 1.0, since they were trying to solve problems that nobody else had previously addressed.
Your poor grasp of history aside, though, I do agree with your main thesis that dealing with "one-person outfits" is perfectly safe, for the most part. I would qualify that by saying that they're safe if they're basically doing some minor refining of existing alternatives (in Slackware's case, the amorphous mass of packages on funet and other sites, and in Libranet's case, the mass of packages available on Debian mirrors). Basically, what it comes down to is: have a back-up plan. (That is to say, not a plan to make backups, but a backup to your current plan).
Libranet users have plenty of viable alternatives that will be easy to switch to if it all does go south, so I—like you—think they have little to worry about.
boy, talk about right over your head! whoosh!
on
Top 20 Geek Novels
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· Score: 1
> No, there's just many different types of SF.
So, say, Tolkien is SF? I don't think you're going to get much buy-in for that theory (although I can, when I'm in the mood, argue in support of that thesis -- see Clarke's law.)
> There's people who focus the SF label to what used to be called "hard SF"
Those people reject the notion that EITHER of "Creatures of Light and Darkness" OR "Lord of Light" are SF. I'm propounding a much more moderate (and much more widely, if informally, accepted) definition here. One that many people I know have found pretty easy to accept once they hear it, even if they've never articulated it themselves.
> most fans laugh at those folks and put dirt in their hair.
Most people laugh at SF fans in general and put dirt in their hair. So what does that prove?
> In the middle is "science fantasy" and a dozen other subgenres.
'SFunny, but in my experience, the ones who insist the hardest about labels like "Science Fantasy" are the ones who insist that only "hard SF" is "real SF", i.e. the people you were just complaining about.
> Read what what you want to read.
I do, thank you. I read SF, fantasy, mysteries, mainstream, and other categories, and enjoy them all (or, at least, certain instances of "them all"). Categorization is not rejection (except among the kind of idiots who enjoy rubbing dirt in people's hair).
> It really not worth having an "arrogant opinion" about.
ANYTHING worth anything is worth having an arrogant opinion about. If you don't have opinions (or if you're one of those pathetic losers who only has "humble opinions"), you ain't worth squat in my book. If you're going to have opinions, stop being a wuss, and make it an arrogant one! People who think opinions aren't worth being arrogant about are the people whose hair I rub dirt into!:p;)
Even if that were true (and I think you're thinking of Huxley), it has nothing to do with his theory or with evolution. Do you think that any exhibit about Newton's Theory of Gravity should have to "be accurate" in that Newton was a religious crank who spent a large part of his time working on insane theories of alchemy? Are Newton's beliefs about alchemy in any way relevent to his theories of gravity, thermodynamics or light?
In any case, Darwin's experience of religion was fairly limited. Most religions by now have come to terms with the discoveries of science and natural philosophy, including most forms of Christianity. It is not "Christians" who object to the Theory of Gravity^WRelativity^WEvolution, it is a tiny, but vocal (and annoying, and scary), minority of Christians. Christians who no more represent the mainstream of Christianity than the Muslim suicide bombers (who they strongly resemble) represent the mainstream of Mohammedism.
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
-- Galileo Galilei
"Creatures of Light and Darkness" is NOT a science fiction novel (in my arrogant opinion). It's a fantasy novel with lots of SF trimmings. On the other hand, Zelazny's "Lord of Light" (written at just about the same time), which at first glance looks even more like a fantasy novel, is science fiction, albeit barely. What makes it truly interesting is that these two novels are more similar to each other than they are to pretty much anything else in either of the fantasy or science fiction genres. Both deal with wars between the Gods of traditional pantheons. The difference is that while CoLaD (which covers the ancient Egyptian pantheon) is full of space ships and advanced science, it makes no attempt to justify or explain its Gods and their magic. They simply are. Thus, it's fantasy. On the other hand, LoL (which covers the Hindu pantheon), while it is utterly lacking in traditional science fiction elements (the people of its world are on the verge of discovering the flush toilet), it at least pretends to justify the Gods and their magic, by claiming that they are the crew (or descendents of the crew) of the ship that colonized the planet, and they were mutated by cosmic radiation during the interstellar flight to the new planet, while the regular colonists were in cryogenic suspension, and thus remained regular humans. Sure, it's about as credible an explanation as "Spiderman was bitten by a radioactive spider, which gave him the power to jump hundreds of feet and cling to the sides of skyscrapers" but it's the attempt to provide a rational explanation, however farfetched, that provides (IMO) the only real boundaries between the often-blurred genres of science fiction and fantasy.
What's more, I think Zelazny deliberately made the more overtly science-fictional of these novels be the one that was actually fantasy, and vice versa, in order to challenge preconcieved notions. But I never quite got around to asking him about it, and now, of course, I never will.
I realize that not everyone will agree with the line I've drawn between fantasy and SF, and that's ok. But in the sixties, at the time these novels were written, a lot of people were asking just where that line should be drawn, and the answer I've provided was a fairly common (though not universally accepted) answer. And I think Zelazny was deliberately trying to challenge this answer, by pushing it as far as he could. Which makes these novels, at least to some extent, pretty darn geeky after all!:)
I find it hard to believe that Space.Com, of all people, left out the first movie really worthy of the term "Space Movie"! Sure, it's old and dated, but Destination Moon was the first movie to even TRY to take the idea of space travel seriously. It stands with Forbidden Planet and The Day the Earth Stood Still as the only even half-way decent science fiction movies of its day, but those other two really aren't space movies. They may have space ships, but they're not about space travel, per se.
Slashdot Mirror
> a Million to One !
:)
I think you're seriously, massively, overestimating the chances! Discworld author Terry Pratchett says that million-to-one chances come up nine times out of ten. While that's an entertainingly flawed equation in a humorous fantasy series, in this case, I think the difference between one-out-of-a-million and nine-out-of-ten is so small compared to the real odds that they might as well be considered equivalent.
> He wasn't forcing you to use OO. He was forcing you to use Open Document Format
Actually, he wasn't trying to force YOU to use anything! He was trying to force the Mass. gov't to use open, cross-platform, multi-vendor formats for their public documents! (Note the plural in "formats"--pdf and html are also on the list.) Private citizens creating their own documents would be free to continue using XYWrite or VisiCalc or whatever other stupid, proprietary formats they want their data to become obsolete in.
> As more and more people use digital cameras and then PhotoShop (or other programs) the 'art' of photography goes away
:)
Ok, so it was a little before my time, but I seem to remember hearing that the whole idea that photography could even be an art form was rejected at first, especially by painters. Frankly, while I'm willing to concede that photography most certainly can be art, it seems to me that digital image manipulation provides at least as much, and possibly far more, room for artistic expression.
Seems to me like there's a bit of poetic justice here. (Is poetic justice a form of art?) I bet there's a bunch of dead painters who would (if they could) be rolling around laughing at the irony of a photographer complaining about people who take advantage of technology to make their art "too easily".
Indeed, and from my observations (mainly on bt.etree.org, which has legally downloadable music and only legally downloadable music), the two most popular clients are Azureus and BitTornado, not necessarily in that order. I don't know if there's something about live music fans (or jam-band fans) that makes them more likely to choose BitTornado, but it seems unlikely. So, by snubbing BitTornado, they not only snubbed my favorite (which I'm used to), but, apparently, one of the most popular clients out there.
BTW, I'm currently offering the New Orleans Radiators' New Years Eve show; anyone who likes (or thinks they might like) some New-Orleans-flavored classic-rock/swamp-pop should check it out here. These guys aren't exactly the RIAA's darlings--they're no pretty-boy pop-stars--but they've been one of America's best party bands for over a quarter of a century, and show no signs of slowing down. And they strongly support their fans' rights to tape and trade their concerts.
> "Do leaks of upcoming products really hurt sales of those products?"
:)
Well, in my case, the chance that I would buy the product has gone from zero to zero, so I would say no. The sales have not been affected at all.
> "Do these kind of lawsuits damage the companies initiating them more than they help?"
Well, in my case, the chance that I would buy the product has gone from zero to zero, so I would say no. The company has not been affected at all.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
In the general case, yes, leaks CAN hurt, if it causes people to hold off on current purchases while they wait for the next release with the new features. This is known as the "Osborne effect," in honor of computer pioneer Adam Osborne, who apparently destroyed his own company by announcing "next version" features too early. As for the second question, well, that's going to have to be judged on a case-by-case basis. Trying to make it into a simple "yes or no" question is naive and silly.
Um, David Boies and co. have very little to worry about as far as career preservation goes. This is the man and company who represented the DoJ in DoJ v Microsoft, who represented Napster in RIAA v Napster, who represented Al Gore in Bush v Gore. Their reputation is already made, or they wouldn't have had those cases, and David is old and near retirement in any case. He also likes to take difficult cases, even when the chance of success is low, and this is well known, so another loss isn't going to harm his repuation or his company's all that much. At least, not among the general public. Among techies, his repuation was already destroyed by his willingness to accept The SCO Group as a client, and, in fact, doing a bad job for them might be his only chance to salvage any of that reputation! :)
Take heart. The company you're thinking of with such nostalgia is the Santa Cruz Operation, and their only involvement in this whole mess is that they sold their UNIX division (and the trademark "SCO UNIX") to a Linux vendor named Caldera a few years back. The Santa Cruz Operation then renamed itself to "Tarantella", and ended up being bought by Sun. Caldera, on the other hand, decided to rename themselves as "The SCO Group" and started suing everyone in sight when they couldn't come up with any other way to make money. Note that there is no "Santa Cruz" in their name. "SCO" is no longer an abbreviation; it's simply a name.
The Santa Cruz Operation was a California company (based, unsuprisingly, in Santa Cruz, California, where I lived for several years). They had a twenty-five year run, which is pretty good in this volatile industry. The SCO Group, on the other hand, is, and always has been, a Utah-based company, has only been around for about a decade, and seems unlikely to see a second.
> Who cares about the pagerank of the submitter's lame-o site?
:)
Well, duh! Obviously, a LOT of people care, or we wouldn't be having this discussion! I know you may find this hard to believe, but some people actually find Google to be a useful tool, and are bothered by those who attempt to make it less useful! Frankly, if slashdot fell off the face of the earth tomorrow, I would be a little bummed, but life would go on. But if Google fell off the face of the earth tomorrow, or merely just stopped returning useful results, I would be seriously screwed!
Maybe you don't think morality should be an issue here, but a lot of people do--moral issues drive a lot of people's involvement with free/open source software. And to many people (including me), this is a moral issue. **BB is trying to make the world just a tiny, tiny bit worse for millions of people (by messing up pagerank very slightly) just to line his own pockets. It's true that in the grand scheme of things, this is a very minor issue, but it still seems immoral to many of us.
So, fact is, a lot of people DO care, and think they have a good reason to care. Which in turn means that Taco HAS to care, because he's potentially losing paying subscribers. Hey, market forces at work, whee!
Anyway, fortunately, I'm posting this after Taco's second update, and I'm overjoyed to see that he's decided to use nofollow. Which, frankly, was all I was ever hoping for. And just in the nick of time, as far as I'm concerned, because, despite the fact that I've been reading and enjoying slashdot on a regular basis for many, many years, I was seriously starting to wonder if I could, in good conscience, keep reading. Especially since it is, at least in my opinion, little more than light entertainment.
> "[...] the drive is primarily designed to operate at full speed."
That is, indeed, one important factor. The other important factor (the one grandparent poster was referring to) is that slower speeds allow the laser more time to burn each bit, and therefore each bit gets burned more clearly. This suggests (and my own small bit of empirical evidence tends to confirm) that the reliability curve will start high, drop off slowly as the speed rises, and then shoot back up as the drive finally reaches full speed. And indeed, with my own (admittedly low-end) drive, I have had no problems with discs burned at speeds up to 8x, and I have had no problems with discs burned at full speed (56x), but I have had problems with discs burned at speeds between 8x and 56x.
Since I have a low-end drive, I don't completely trust the full-speed calibration, and so I tend to use 4x or 8x for stuff I really care about, and 56x for stuff that's more easily replaceable.
> I actually was around before Microsoft seriously entered the computing market.
Me too! In fact, I was around before MS entered the computing market, period.
> I remember computers costing $10k (the Apple Lisa).
And you can still spend that (or many times that) if you want. And there were computers that only cost a couple of hundred on the market at the same time. As there are now. So whatcherpoint?
> I remember dozens of machines with no interoperability (TI 99/4, Atari, TRS 80, Exidy Sorcerer, Apple...)
Yup, those were the cheap ones. And I was writing cross-platform apps for those machines with supposedly "no interoperability" at the time! And we did it basically the same way it's done today, with compilers to hide CPU differences, and libraries to hide other system differences. Sure, the overheads associated with cross-platform work made it a non-starter for, say, video games, but for business apps and such, it was clearly, even at the time, the wave of the future.
> Microsoft, love it or hate it, established a defacto standard.
No, IBM established a defacto standard. And, in the process, managed to kill of a lot of the existing market for cross-platform support (anyone remember UCSD Pascal or Fig-Forth?), and, arguably, set the industry back by a decade or more. Microsoft just happened to be lucky enough to be in a position where they were able to hijack the standards created by IBM. People didn't go with Microsoft because it was better (or even very good); they went with Microsoft because it was "IBM-PC compatible".
And, in fact, by the time the PC came along, the small business computing market had already pretty much standardized on CP/M, and Digital Research was already looking at porting CP/M to a new generation of sixteen-bit chips. All the indicators, at the time (before MS came along), were pointing clearly in the direction of cheaper, more powerful computers with more standardized interfaces and APIs. What bucket you were hiding under to believe otherwise I can't imagine!
> Every vendor back in the '80s was desperately trying to steal their piece of market share, and the concept of open common standards was effectively non-existent.
Complete, utter hogwash! How many vendors were supporting CP/M at the time? How many were supporting Unix? Dozens, if not hundreds! I call shenanigans! We even bought one of those Apple Lisa's you mentioned around that time, but we didn't buy it to run LisaOS (or whatever it was called)--we bought it to run BSD! Gee, there was already a FREE cross-platform OS even way back then! Kinda makes you go "hmm", doesn't it?
> As far as Gates' generosity being a "new" thing...no, its not.
No, but Gates' personal generosity towards humanity in general has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with Microsoft's role as an evil, predatory monopoly! My feelings for BG are completely separate from my feelings for MS, and my feelings for MS are that I haven't used any of their software since '98, and hope to never do so again.
I'm no structural engineer, but I know that concrete is extremely rigid--this is why steel-reinforced concrete is used in construction. The steel is more flexible, and helps hold together the concrete even when it cracks under stress. And I know that something very rigid is excellent at transmitting vibrations. So "seeing" through twelve inches of concrete (even reinforced concrete) should be much, much easier than "seeing" through, say, a sandwich of two five-inch reinforced concrete walls with a layer of something more flexible (e.g. rubber) between. As long as the two rigid layers are completely separate, there should be little or no transmission between them. I bet someone who was a structural engineer would be able to come up with a reliable way to defeat this (without sacrificing safety) in fairly short order.
It's a neat idea, though, and I hope it finds applications in (as others have suggested) search-and-rescue and elsewhere.
> The first sentence of the question says it all: Microsoft dominates the desktop.
:)
:)
Indeed! And, in fact, the desktop is the only place they were ever officially judged to have a monopoly! (They haven't been investigated for their control of the office suite or office suite component markets--yet!) Thus, the article's comments about web servers and supercomputers are irrelevant. Ditto for the comments about gaming consoles.
Also, there seems to be a lot of confusion about the difference between the LEGAL definition of monopoly and the DICTIONARY definition of monopoly. In the US at least, the legal definition of monopoly is based on the Sherman Anti-Trust acts, and has to do with the degree of control of a market, NOT with absolute control! Basically the question under the Sherman act is, are free market forces in control of this market? Can MS still unilaterally make decisions that will absolutely force the market to move in certain directions? The answer is clearly yes. Is the pricing of their (desktop) systems controlled by market forces and competition? The answer is clearly no. In fact, the only reason there are even hints of competition still around is that some people chose the insane (from a strict free-market perspective) option of charging no money at all for their systems. In a truly free market, giving your product away for free would instantly result in such a large market share that you would probably end up under investigation for anti-trust abuse yourself. The fact that years of giving Linux (and BSD) away for free has barely caused a blip in the market just shows how strong MS's monopoly still is.
Another point many seem to miss: Microsoft's customers are primarily OEMs and resellers, NOT end-users! Sure, they have a few direct sales--you can go out and buy a retail copy of Windows at your neighborhood computer store--but the vast VAST majority of their sales are for preloads! So the question to ask is not: can Joe Schmoe go out and buy another OS for his machine; the question to ask is: can Dell or Gateway tell MS, "fuck off, we're going with your competitor from now on." Anyone who thinks the answer to this question is yes is invited to buy some shares in a little real-estate deal I have going on down in Florida.
Note that I would agree that some chinks have appeared in their armor, and MS is, perhaps, not quite AS dominant as they were a few years back, but they're still a LONG way from losing their monopoly control of the desktop market! A long, loo-o-o-ong way!
In fact, asking the question, "does MS still have a monopoly" of a bunch of techie nerds is just silly. This is a legal question, since we're dealing with the legal definition of a monopoly, and therefore, the appropriate person to ask would be a LAWYER! Asking Slashdot for a legal opinion makes about as much sense as...asking Slashdot for marital advice!
Oh come on--if they paid me $395, I'd probably be willing to wear one. Though I'm not sure why they'd want me to.
...Wait, you're saying they want ME to pay THEM?
:)
Oh.
Nevermind.
> Objective-C, or as I like to refer to it, "C++ done right".
:)
:)
Of course, Smalltalk programmers might not agree--many of them think of Objective-C as "Smalltalk done wrong." We won't even mention what CLOS programmers might think of the whole notion.
Frankly, though, I think too much time is spent looking for the "perfect" language! C++ or Java objects are small and have little or no overhead, making them useful in places where you wouldn't consider using Smalltalk/ObjectiveC objects, but Smalltalk/ObjectiveC objects are far more flexible and versatile, making them easily useful for stuff that would be a nightmare to code or maintain in C++ or Java. One could try to go with a compromise like Objective-C++, but then you end up with two non-intersecting object heirarchies, which can be a problem in itself. Perl's overly-flexible syntax allows for serious abuse; Python's overly-restrictive syntax often forces awkward workarounds. Etc., etc., etc.
The fact is that nobody has designed a perfect language yet, and my suspicion is that nobody will. But until they do, I'll go on using different languages for different problem domains, and cursing when those domains brush up against each other.
So the question isn't "are they whores?"; that's a given. The question is, should they charge more for more unpleasant/degrading services. I think you'll find that your friendly neighborhood hooker charges more for anal than she does for a quick hand-job--why shouldn't these guys do the same? :)
Given that ATI and NVidia are both on my "do not buy under any circumstances[*]" list, it seems like a case of measuring the non-reflectivity of pots and kettles to me! :)
[*] Actually, there is a circumstance under which I'd consider them, but I refuse to hold my breath waiting for a full source-code release to either company's drivers or even a full spec release.
> Closed source produces a lot of good code, but you never get to see it (unless you work on it) becuase it stays closed.
Really? Because I have worked for a wide variety of closed-source companies over the last 25 years, and I have seen very little of this "good code" you refer to. One of the things that seriously attracted me to open source/free software in general was the much higher standards of coding that most of the developers seemed to adhere to.
Of course, maybe things have improved since I dumped Windows for once and for all back in '98, but somehow, I find it unlikely.
It's probably worth mentioning, in case people hadn't noticed, that you can--and I do--have the Hubble Site configured as a "Slashbox", so the current "image of interest" (at present, this Crab Nebula mozaic) will appear as a small image on the Slashdot front page. I've noticed (and grabbed) numerous images this way. Note that this only works, as far as I know, if you have a named account--but you don't need a subscription. Just go to Preferences, click on "Homepage", go down to the "Customize Slashboxes" section, and put a checkmark next to "Hubble Site". You'll be glad you did.
:)
(At least, I assume you'll be glad you did, since, otherwise, why are you bothering to read the discussions about this article in the first place?)
I put mine (actually, it was given to me) on the front of my SPARCstation, covering the Sun logo, but not the word "Sun".
:)
(Of course, my SS is actually running Linux, but that's another story. If I owned a Mac, it would be running Linux too.)
Actually, lots of people will: there are certain people who will use it specifically because IE lacks support for it. However, as long as IE lacks support, there is no danger that it will be used for ads! The minute it gets added to IE, it's going to have to be added to adblocker as well.
> "Slackware, for instance, had the first 'packages' as we'd recognize them."
No, actually, the packages predate the distributions -- I used to download individual packages off of funet.fi, back in the very early days when you still needed a Minix boot floppy to run fdisk and mkfs for Linux. The first "distro" was SLS, and it simply tried to provide a little overall organization for the steadily growing mass of packages that already existed. And Debian didn't "fix the flaws in Slackware's original model" because A) it wasn't "Slackware's model", it was simply the standard model that everyone used at the time (but, if anything, it was SLS's model), and B) Slackware and Debian were founded at basically the same time, which makes it hard to claim that Debian was influenced by Slackware in any way, since Slackware didn't exist back then! Of course, Slackware went from non-existence to 1.0 status in almost no time, since it relied on pre-existing technologies, while Debian took several years to reach 1.0, since they were trying to solve problems that nobody else had previously addressed.
Your poor grasp of history aside, though, I do agree with your main thesis that dealing with "one-person outfits" is perfectly safe, for the most part. I would qualify that by saying that they're safe if they're basically doing some minor refining of existing alternatives (in Slackware's case, the amorphous mass of packages on funet and other sites, and in Libranet's case, the mass of packages available on Debian mirrors). Basically, what it comes down to is: have a back-up plan. (That is to say, not a plan to make backups, but a backup to your current plan).
Libranet users have plenty of viable alternatives that will be easy to switch to if it all does go south, so I—like you—think they have little to worry about.
> No, there's just many different types of SF.
:p ;)
So, say, Tolkien is SF? I don't think you're going to get much buy-in for that theory (although I can, when I'm in the mood, argue in support of that thesis -- see Clarke's law.)
> There's people who focus the SF label to what used to be called "hard SF"
Those people reject the notion that EITHER of "Creatures of Light and Darkness" OR "Lord of Light" are SF. I'm propounding a much more moderate (and much more widely, if informally, accepted) definition here. One that many people I know have found pretty easy to accept once they hear it, even if they've never articulated it themselves.
> most fans laugh at those folks and put dirt in their hair.
Most people laugh at SF fans in general and put dirt in their hair. So what does that prove?
> In the middle is "science fantasy" and a dozen other subgenres.
'SFunny, but in my experience, the ones who insist the hardest about labels like "Science Fantasy" are the ones who insist that only "hard SF" is "real SF", i.e. the people you were just complaining about.
> Read what what you want to read.
I do, thank you. I read SF, fantasy, mysteries, mainstream, and other categories, and enjoy them all (or, at least, certain instances of "them all"). Categorization is not rejection (except among the kind of idiots who enjoy rubbing dirt in people's hair).
> It really not worth having an "arrogant opinion" about.
ANYTHING worth anything is worth having an arrogant opinion about. If you don't have opinions (or if you're one of those pathetic losers who only has "humble opinions"), you ain't worth squat in my book. If you're going to have opinions, stop being a wuss, and make it an arrogant one! People who think opinions aren't worth being arrogant about are the people whose hair I rub dirt into!
Even if that were true (and I think you're thinking of Huxley), it has nothing to do with his theory or with evolution. Do you think that any exhibit about Newton's Theory of Gravity should have to "be accurate" in that Newton was a religious crank who spent a large part of his time working on insane theories of alchemy? Are Newton's beliefs about alchemy in any way relevent to his theories of gravity, thermodynamics or light?
In any case, Darwin's experience of religion was fairly limited. Most religions by now have come to terms with the discoveries of science and natural philosophy, including most forms of Christianity. It is not "Christians" who object to the Theory of Gravity^WRelativity^WEvolution, it is a tiny, but vocal (and annoying, and scary), minority of Christians. Christians who no more represent the mainstream of Christianity than the Muslim suicide bombers (who they strongly resemble) represent the mainstream of Mohammedism.
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended
us to forgo their use."
-- Galileo Galilei
"Creatures of Light and Darkness" is NOT a science fiction novel (in my arrogant opinion). It's a fantasy novel with lots of SF trimmings. On the other hand, Zelazny's "Lord of Light" (written at just about the same time), which at first glance looks even more like a fantasy novel, is science fiction, albeit barely. What makes it truly interesting is that these two novels are more similar to each other than they are to pretty much anything else in either of the fantasy or science fiction genres. Both deal with wars between the Gods of traditional pantheons. The difference is that while CoLaD (which covers the ancient Egyptian pantheon) is full of space ships and advanced science, it makes no attempt to justify or explain its Gods and their magic. They simply are. Thus, it's fantasy. On the other hand, LoL (which covers the Hindu pantheon), while it is utterly lacking in traditional science fiction elements (the people of its world are on the verge of discovering the flush toilet), it at least pretends to justify the Gods and their magic, by claiming that they are the crew (or descendents of the crew) of the ship that colonized the planet, and they were mutated by cosmic radiation during the interstellar flight to the new planet, while the regular colonists were in cryogenic suspension, and thus remained regular humans. Sure, it's about as credible an explanation as "Spiderman was bitten by a radioactive spider, which gave him the power to jump hundreds of feet and cling to the sides of skyscrapers" but it's the attempt to provide a rational explanation, however farfetched, that provides (IMO) the only real boundaries between the often-blurred genres of science fiction and fantasy.
:)
What's more, I think Zelazny deliberately made the more overtly science-fictional of these novels be the one that was actually fantasy, and vice versa, in order to challenge preconcieved notions. But I never quite got around to asking him about it, and now, of course, I never will.
I realize that not everyone will agree with the line I've drawn between fantasy and SF, and that's ok. But in the sixties, at the time these novels were written, a lot of people were asking just where that line should be drawn, and the answer I've provided was a fairly common (though not universally accepted) answer. And I think Zelazny was deliberately trying to challenge this answer, by pushing it as far as he could. Which makes these novels, at least to some extent, pretty darn geeky after all!
I find it hard to believe that Space.Com, of all people, left out the first movie really worthy of the term "Space Movie"! Sure, it's old and dated, but Destination Moon was the first movie to even TRY to take the idea of space travel seriously. It stands with Forbidden Planet and The Day the Earth Stood Still as the only even half-way decent science fiction movies of its day, but those other two really aren't space movies. They may have space ships, but they're not about space travel, per se.