My question is, who will be the first sysadmin to get fired for pushing distributed clients on all the corporate workstations without the bosses knowing?
On the legitimate side of this, the company that is most likely to succeed is the one that markets itself best to corporations. In my limited experience, most corporations just run lame screne savers. If you go to them and explain that they are losing money running screen savers, they will be happy to oblige.
On the sinister side of this, the distributed processing company that integrates an employee monitoring system into the client and markets that to large corporations will probably do pretty well also.
You don't have to cover the total cost of the electricity anyway. You just have to cover the difference between the cost of power consumed at idle now, and power consumed running the client. The question then hinges on how well the "power saving idle mode" works on most PCs. Anybody got the numbers?
Assuming that the numbers make it beneficial for corporations to run the client, the question may then be one of whether or not there is sufficient demand for distributed services. Right now, render farms and weather forcasts are the two obvious commercial applications. I think we're going to have to think of a few more if distributed computing is to become a significant industry.
TI-99/4A--What a piece of crap. My parents bought that for me one Christmas because they didn't know any better. You couldn't do jack with it unless you shelled out for the "expansion module" which was like, $1000. Their business model was "sell them the machine, so they have to buy the expensive peripherals".
It took months to convince them to get me a C-64, which I adored and used from 10th grade through the middle of college.
And for that crime, I hereby sentence you to whatever is picked by the random drawing. My lovely assistant Trisha will now spin the wheel. Oooooh... let's hope it doesn't land on Lethal Injection. (the crowd starts chanting, Lethal Injection, Lethal Injection!).
For those who miss the courtroom spectacle, it'll be available on DVD.
If calling somewhat a pirate makes you think they have committed murder on the high seas, does calling someone a b**** make you think they are a female dog?
Better yet, I've actually heard environmentalists accuse companies of raping the land. Do you actually think they f***** the dirt?
...of something I've been telling y'all for a while.
Free operating systems shift the balance of power towards hardware vendors. The "revolution" is plainly not of any benefit or concern to these companies. The ultimate destiny will be thousands of pieces of hardware running thousands of different Linuxes. Company X will only support *their* linux. This could be a prelude to HP getting into workstation sales. Then in order to get support, you either have to buy an HP workstation and run their Linux on it, or run Windows.
Hmmm... I wonder what an announcement from HP stating that they were getting into the Linux workstation business would do to their stock price.
...by an international treaty. It's just another piece of junk for NORAD to track. There have already been close calls with the space shuttle. On one flight, a paint flek chipped the orbiter window.
What happens if this little wonder hits some other piece of space junk? Ever been hit by a CD fragment at 18000 mph?
If they don't put a stop to this crap, there won't just be little urns and messages and things orbiting up there--there will be bodies of whole astronauts, cosmonauts, and various other 'nauts floating around, because it is only a matter of time before one of these little missiles hits a manned craft.
Come on, people, get some sense. Lives are at stake.
More than 70,000 I bet. Unless the average Windows developer has written less than one application, the number has got to be a lot higher than this.
Of course, it all depends on how you define "application". Does Hello World count? Does a screen saver count? Certainly a freeware app distributed over the Internet counts. Shrink-wrapped software counts. Does in-house custom work count? I've written apps in all these categories except shrink-wrapped.
If I had to put a number to it, I'd say I've written at least 10 apps, 2 or 3 of which are currently being used by at least one person other than me. I'm not counting the countless little test applications and scripts I've written that run in a Windows environment. If I did, the number would probably be in the hundreds.
The Washington Post ran an article about a consultant in LA who is making money on prior art searches. Companies involved in disputes like this will gladly pay the guy thousands of dollars so they can beat the patent and avoid paying some other company millions of dollars. Sorry, it was the dead tree edition, which is now decaying very slowly in a landfill, so I can't tell you the URL for the article.
I always thought you could do whatever you wanted with a book as long as you didn't copy the whole thing. You actually thought two people reading the same book was illegal? How did you ever get through study sessions? What are you going to do when you have kids? Not read along with them?
At the crux of all this is the fact that electronic books, unlike physical books, can be copied at will and with virtually no loss of resources or loss of quality.
One sane way to approach this is with a "one monitor per license" EULA. That preserves the original balance between copyright holder and reader.
Unfortunately, users won't hold still for it, and companies can't resist tightening their grip.
I fear that where we once had passionate arguments between Democrats and Republicans using words, we will now have violent conflict between Socialists and Fascists toting guns.
Yes, but that 10% is a very important 10%. Many of these in-housers are doing the same, dull, boring crap, like yanking payroll information out of a database in various customized ways.
The other 10% are guys like Larry at PolyBytes. Here's a guy who most likely enjoys what he is doing, charging a decent price for his software (which I use and like so much that I registered another copy for work) and probably making some profit (though I have no idea what his sales figures are). As for support, my $20 registration has gotten me very prompt and courteous support. I'm sick and tired of the Free Software argument that says guys like Larry are oppressing me because I can't see their source. Quite the opposite, PolyView has set me free from the drudgery of converting and manipulating various image formats.
In years past, there were lots of Larrys providing a wide range of choices in various software categories. If the OSS juggernaut rolls on, and there are only 1 or 2 current programs to perform tasks in a particular category, how will this enhance the freedom of the user?
The other thing I don't like about this 90/10 argument is that I have never seen hard statistics from reputable sources to back it up. Also, this argument has a tendency to reinforce itself. People say, "oh it doesn't matter that we hurt these people, because they can always get a job doing this". I haven't asked larry, but I bet he has no desire to take a job at some bland corporation that involves pulling things out of a database all day. He's probably more free and happy doing what he's doing. And I feel free using his software. A world where all software is "Free Speach" may not be so Free after all.
1. If the current high demand for IT professionals falls, it could result in reduced interest in CS on college campuses. What percentage of Open Source is written by grad students?
2. A cultural or demographic shift could reduce the number of twinky-gobbling caffeine-a-holic dudes who are willing to stay up until 3am working on code. Actually, the twinkies may just kill all the hackers.
#2 will be especially hard on GPL'd projects if BSD or other non copy-lefted alternatives are available. The latter can be revived by the traditional business model. The former can't; not legally anyway. (Some have referred to the "GPL virus", but because it prevents smooth shifts in the equilibrium between Open and Proprietary software, I prefer to call it the "GPL ratchet".)
3. The commoditization of software could cause a shift towards proprietary hardware. I don't mean to harp on this, but it's a point a lot of people seem to miss. We have commodity PCs now, in large part, because they all have to run MS software. Start letting HW vendors write their own custom OS's, then we are back to the early 80s with Apple, Atari, Commodore, etc... and very little software compatability. Sure, they'll all run elf binaries now, but once the hardware market is fragmented, HW vendors will try to come up with killer apps to lock you into their system, much as Apple did with graphics early in the game.
So... just because OSS looks like it is going to take over the world now, doesn't mean it will. In fact, there may be a "cycle" that takes place between Open Hardware and Open Software. 1980--not much standard hardware on the market. 1990--not much Open Software on the market. 2000--a move towards internet appliances and game consoles, all with different hardware.
4. If the current OSS domination does collapse in a highly noticeable way, this might prevent a new cycle of OSS domination from occuring for quite some time, until a new group of young, undiscouraged hackers emerges.
The quote in the article sounds more like a description of the warez community.
When I hear people say "all software should be free" I think of the Free Software movement.
When I hear people say "free sofware can sometimes be a lot better than commercial sofware" I think of the Open Source movement.
Of these three movements, it's rather ironic that they should choose to slam Open Source, since it's the most conservative of the three. One is apt to believe that businessmen protecting their commercial interests are conservatives. OTOH, Hollywood is actually full of liberals.
We may be witnessing them being torn between their liberalism and their desire to make a buck.
Actually, this falls in line with something I've been saying for a while: "The left doesn't know what's right anymore".
For example, you used to be able to count on the left supporting labor. But now you've got Bill Clinton and Al Gore supporting trade with China. That's certainly confused a lot of trade unionists.
Now we've got the Free Software movement, certainly a creature of the left, being opposed by Hollywood liberals. Conservatives, take note. Here is an opportunity to divide and conquer.
I think people are confused about greed and money. People often misquote the biblical "money is the root of all evil". The full quote is "the love of money is the root of all evil".
So, wanting to get wealthy is not wrong. Wanting to get wealthy to the exclusion of all else, placing the desire for wealth at the center of your life, screwing people over just to make a buck. That's what's wrong.
Morality is in the attitude, not the bank account. After all, if there were no money, we would be reduced to using an inefficient barter economy, or breaking society down into little self-sustaining collectives that would never be able to unite and produce the way the free market does.
Plainly, money is a good thing. Here's a challenge to all those who say money is evil: take a vow of poverty. Find a monestary or some similar sort of collective society that will allow you to live without money. You might have luck with this at Intentional Communities. What? No takers? I didn't think so.
It's impossible to orbit a satellite that can't be seen from at least some parts of the southern hemisphere.
A worst case scenario would be a satellite orbiting just above the atmospheric limit, right over the equator, which would only be visible within a strip along the equator. Even so, since the atmospheric limit is roughly 150km, we are talking about a pretty wide strip.
As far as the ISS is concerned, I imagine the orbit is inclined with respect to the equator by a considerable ammount, so there should be plenty of viewing opportunities for most of the world. Extreme latitudes (northern Norway, Alaska, Tierra del Fuego) are probably left out in the cold. Ummm... you know what I mean.
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I guess what I really mean is, who will be the first to get fired for doing it, and have an actual dollar figure attached to the mischief.
My question is, who will be the first sysadmin to get fired for pushing distributed clients on all the corporate workstations without the bosses knowing?
On the legitimate side of this, the company that is most likely to succeed is the one that markets itself best to corporations. In my limited experience, most corporations just run lame screne savers. If you go to them and explain that they are losing money running screen savers, they will be happy to oblige.
On the sinister side of this, the distributed processing company that integrates an employee monitoring system into the client and markets that to large corporations will probably do pretty well also.
You don't have to cover the total cost of the electricity anyway. You just have to cover the difference between the cost of power consumed at idle now, and power consumed running the client. The question then hinges on how well the "power saving idle mode" works on most PCs. Anybody got the numbers?
Assuming that the numbers make it beneficial for corporations to run the client, the question may then be one of whether or not there is sufficient demand for distributed services. Right now, render farms and weather forcasts are the two obvious commercial applications. I think we're going to have to think of a few more if distributed computing is to become a significant industry.
They anihilate eachother, creating a burst of legal briefs containing just as many letters as the combined text of the patents and the antipatents.
TI-99/4A--What a piece of crap. My parents bought that for me one Christmas because they didn't know any better. You couldn't do jack with it unless you shelled out for the "expansion module" which was like, $1000. Their business model was "sell them the machine, so they have to buy the expensive peripherals".
It took months to convince them to get me a C-64, which I adored and used from 10th grade through the middle of college.
And for that crime, I hereby sentence you to whatever is picked by the random drawing. My lovely assistant Trisha will now spin the wheel. Oooooh... let's hope it doesn't land on Lethal Injection. (the crowd starts chanting, Lethal Injection, Lethal Injection!).
For those who miss the courtroom spectacle, it'll be available on DVD.
Didn't you see that? Or has this just degenerated into a "let's bash timothy" because he isn't one of the original Mercury 7 Slashdotters?
If calling somewhat a pirate makes you think they have committed murder on the high seas, does calling someone a b**** make you think they are a female dog?
Better yet, I've actually heard environmentalists accuse companies of raping the land. Do you actually think they f***** the dirt?
...of something I've been telling y'all for a while.
Free operating systems shift the balance of power towards hardware vendors. The "revolution" is plainly not of any benefit or concern to these companies. The ultimate destiny will be thousands of pieces of hardware running thousands of different Linuxes. Company X will only support *their* linux. This could be a prelude to HP getting into workstation sales. Then in order to get support, you either have to buy an HP workstation and run their Linux on it, or run Windows.
Hmmm... I wonder what an announcement from HP stating that they were getting into the Linux workstation business would do to their stock price.
...by an international treaty. It's just another piece of junk for NORAD to track. There have already been close calls with the space shuttle. On one flight, a paint flek chipped the orbiter window.
What happens if this little wonder hits some other piece of space junk? Ever been hit by a CD fragment at 18000 mph?
If they don't put a stop to this crap, there won't just be little urns and messages and things orbiting up there--there will be bodies of whole astronauts, cosmonauts, and various other 'nauts floating around, because it is only a matter of time before one of these little missiles hits a manned craft.
Come on, people, get some sense. Lives are at stake.
More than 70,000 I bet. Unless the average Windows developer has written less than one application, the number has got to be a lot higher than this.
Of course, it all depends on how you define "application". Does Hello World count? Does a screen saver count? Certainly a freeware app distributed over the Internet counts. Shrink-wrapped software counts. Does in-house custom work count? I've written apps in all these categories except shrink-wrapped.
If I had to put a number to it, I'd say I've written at least 10 apps, 2 or 3 of which are currently being used by at least one person other than me. I'm not counting the countless little test applications and scripts I've written that run in a Windows environment. If I did, the number would probably be in the hundreds.
The Washington Post ran an article about a consultant in LA who is making money on prior art searches. Companies involved in disputes like this will gladly pay the guy thousands of dollars so they can beat the patent and avoid paying some other company millions of dollars. Sorry, it was the dead tree edition, which is now decaying very slowly in a landfill, so I can't tell you the URL for the article.
They use termite which makes it very hard to breath
Yuri! release the termite! Da, must eat wooden book before Amerikanski come. Ohhh... the termite is eating, it's farting, I can't breath.
OK, I know, you meant thermite, but it still made me chuckle when I saw it.
I always thought you could do whatever you wanted with a book as long as you didn't copy the whole thing. You actually thought two people reading the same book was illegal? How did you ever get through study sessions? What are you going to do when you have kids? Not read along with them?
At the crux of all this is the fact that electronic books, unlike physical books, can be copied at will and with virtually no loss of resources or loss of quality.
One sane way to approach this is with a "one monitor per license" EULA. That preserves the original balance between copyright holder and reader.
Unfortunately, users won't hold still for it, and companies can't resist tightening their grip.
I fear that where we once had passionate arguments between Democrats and Republicans using words, we will now have violent conflict between Socialists and Fascists toting guns.
Yes, but that 10% is a very important 10%. Many of these in-housers are doing the same, dull, boring crap, like yanking payroll information out of a database in various customized ways.
The other 10% are guys like Larry at PolyBytes. Here's a guy who most likely enjoys what he is doing, charging a decent price for his software (which I use and like so much that I registered another copy for work) and probably making some profit (though I have no idea what his sales figures are). As for support, my $20 registration has gotten me very prompt and courteous support. I'm sick and tired of the Free Software argument that says guys like Larry are oppressing me because I can't see their source. Quite the opposite, PolyView has set me free from the drudgery of converting and manipulating various image formats.
In years past, there were lots of Larrys providing a wide range of choices in various software categories. If the OSS juggernaut rolls on, and there are only 1 or 2 current programs to perform tasks in a particular category, how will this enhance the freedom of the user?
The other thing I don't like about this 90/10 argument is that I have never seen hard statistics from reputable sources to back it up. Also, this argument has a tendency to reinforce itself. People say, "oh it doesn't matter that we hurt these people, because they can always get a job doing this". I haven't asked larry, but I bet he has no desire to take a job at some bland corporation that involves pulling things out of a database all day. He's probably more free and happy doing what he's doing. And I feel free using his software. A world where all software is "Free Speach" may not be so Free after all.
1. If the current high demand for IT professionals falls, it could result in reduced interest in CS on college campuses. What percentage of Open Source is written by grad students?
2. A cultural or demographic shift could reduce the number of twinky-gobbling caffeine-a-holic dudes who are willing to stay up until 3am working on code. Actually, the twinkies may just kill all the hackers.
#2 will be especially hard on GPL'd projects if BSD or other non copy-lefted alternatives are available. The latter can be revived by the traditional business model. The former can't; not legally anyway. (Some have referred to the "GPL virus", but because it prevents smooth shifts in the equilibrium between Open and Proprietary software, I prefer to call it the "GPL ratchet".)
3. The commoditization of software could cause a shift towards proprietary hardware. I don't mean to harp on this, but it's a point a lot of people seem to miss. We have commodity PCs now, in large part, because they all have to run MS software. Start letting HW vendors write their own custom OS's, then we are back to the early 80s with Apple, Atari, Commodore, etc... and very little software compatability. Sure, they'll all run elf binaries now, but once the hardware market is fragmented, HW vendors will try to come up with killer apps to lock you into their system, much as Apple did with graphics early in the game.
So... just because OSS looks like it is going to take over the world now, doesn't mean it will. In fact, there may be a "cycle" that takes place between Open Hardware and Open Software. 1980--not much standard hardware on the market. 1990--not much Open Software on the market. 2000--a move towards internet appliances and game consoles, all with different hardware.
4. If the current OSS domination does collapse in a highly noticeable way, this might prevent a new cycle of OSS domination from occuring for quite some time, until a new group of young, undiscouraged hackers emerges.
Is this limited form of teaching really teaching?
Yes. It teaches you that you can't always have things your way.
The real question is, when will those in the Open Source (and/or Free Software) movement(s) learn to take the new power in their hands,
Ummm... when they become as Machiavellian as the other guys?
I was just itching for an excuse to say "Machiavellian". I hope I spelled it right.
The quote in the article sounds more like a description of the warez community.
When I hear people say "all software should be free" I think of the Free Software movement.
When I hear people say "free sofware can sometimes be a lot better than commercial sofware" I think of the Open Source movement.
Of these three movements, it's rather ironic that they should choose to slam Open Source, since it's the most conservative of the three. One is apt to believe that businessmen protecting their commercial interests are conservatives. OTOH, Hollywood is actually full of liberals.
We may be witnessing them being torn between their liberalism and their desire to make a buck.
Actually, this falls in line with something I've been saying for a while: "The left doesn't know what's right anymore".
For example, you used to be able to count on the left supporting labor. But now you've got Bill Clinton and Al Gore supporting trade with China. That's certainly confused a lot of trade unionists.
Now we've got the Free Software movement, certainly a creature of the left, being opposed by Hollywood liberals. Conservatives, take note. Here is an opportunity to divide and conquer.
...at least do it right. Free Software is a "movement". Open Source is just a study in economics.
I think people are confused about greed and money. People often misquote the biblical "money is the root of all evil". The full quote is "the love of money is the root of all evil".
So, wanting to get wealthy is not wrong. Wanting to get wealthy to the exclusion of all else, placing the desire for wealth at the center of your life, screwing people over just to make a buck. That's what's wrong.
Morality is in the attitude, not the bank account. After all, if there were no money, we would be reduced to using an inefficient barter economy, or breaking society down into little self-sustaining collectives that would never be able to unite and produce the way the free market does.
Plainly, money is a good thing. Here's a challenge to all those who say money is evil: take a vow of poverty. Find a monestary or some similar sort of collective society that will allow you to live without money. You might have luck with this at Intentional Communities. What? No takers? I didn't think so.
Why? As a preemptive strike?
Is that a soccer field?
It's impossible to orbit a satellite that can't be seen from at least some parts of the southern hemisphere.
A worst case scenario would be a satellite orbiting just above the atmospheric limit, right over the equator, which would only be visible within a strip along the equator. Even so, since the atmospheric limit is roughly 150km, we are talking about a pretty wide strip.
As far as the ISS is concerned, I imagine the orbit is inclined with respect to the equator by a considerable ammount, so there should be plenty of viewing opportunities for most of the world. Extreme latitudes (northern Norway, Alaska, Tierra del Fuego) are probably left out in the cold. Ummm... you know what I mean.
A GPL'd source obfuscator? That's pretty ironic.
Too long for /. Go to:
http://vrml3d.com/motive/publicsw.htm