Sorry, but I do not trust a TransAM worth a darn. Why? Once when I was in San Diego I rented a high end Camero and drove into the desert. I drove fast (so fast) that my partner actually became nervous. I loved it because it was mountain roads, with plenty of curves. Then one curve I almost ran into a cliff. I managed to gain control just in the knick in time.
I was puzzled as to what happened. So I looked at the brakes because they were not working anymore. The problem was that because of my driving my brakes overheated and lost traction due to the heat.
At that point I just thought, Crap car.... Plenty of horsepower in a snail carriage.
You see I live in Europe and drive a sports car at about 155 MPH (German Autobahn). And Cameros and TransAm's are NOT built for those types of speed. Corvette, yes, Viper OH YEAH BABY yes... Actually you have not seen horsepower until you see a Viper take off on the Autobahn. Your jaw just drops. But that is it for North American performance cars.
Now about beating a Porsche? I can beat Porsche's as well. It depends on the model. A Boxer no problem. A Porsche S2? NOT A CHANCE.... Also come to the Nuernberg Ring and then we will talk. Because the boys and girls that race on the Nuernberg ring REALLY race and drive fast....
The problem is the entire management. Look at the following http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/about/executiv es .
What do they talk about? They first mention how "intelligent" they are and then talk about what they did. THAT IS WHAT IS WRONG WITH MANDRAKE...
I could say, "I studied at one of the best engineering schools in North America" (I actually did) as well. But the reality is that, this gets me nowhere (as it should) because it is actions that convince! Because while education at a good school helps, there are oodles of self taught programmers that are just as good or better than the "best schools".
You know the immigration thing does bother me. I am university educated (Canadian) and so is my wife (both are engineers). But yet we cannot immigrate to the US. The best we can hope is an H1B, which, well you know is not great. We once tried to immigrate to the US. My wife got a job, but not me. They said that I would be restricted, etc, etc. And my wife only got a potential H1B or TN1.
Result? We moved to Europe. Ok it is easier since I am a German and there is no immigration issues, in the EU. But we live in Switzerland. Switzerland is not an immigration country, permits are hard to get and yet we can live here. It does look like my wife and I will be staying here until we retire.
It is wierd how life goes because we wanted to live in the US and ended up in Switzerland. But often I wonder what if....
As sad as it sounds. I always liked the US because it was the model of how things can be done and achieved in business and life.
But with the turn of the year 2000 and burst of the stock bubble, I am REALLY wondering if the US is going downhill. If you look at the laws that have been passed and the rights that have been taken away in the US you REALLY wonder.
This is not meant to be Anti-American since I am not Anti-American people. Americans are humans just like everybody else. You got idiots and you have nice people, just like anywhere else. But it seems that the establishment within the USA is going a bit wierd....
They could hurt Redhat, yes because Redhat is an American company. But I thought Mandrake was a French company? And I doubt that they patented using European patents. Likewise with Suse.
Do you know what is happening here? The US is starting to feed on itself. And people outside the US are starting to profit....
For example copyrights on specific music pieces in Europe expire and as such they are free to copy, but not in the US.
Interesting the Land of Free is turning into the land of the regulated lawyer! Actually sad!
Lets say that you want to increase compression of some data. EG HTML. Could there not be a technique to speed things up? Sure there is, get rid of the spaces, remove some tags, etc.
Well lets say that with each compression technique there are levels of what can be thrown away. And maybe when he tweaks to level 7 he throws away too much. At that point the app does crash since he may be throwing away something interesting.
Of course it does. Lets say the judge finds them guilty. Well the order of the judge will be either financially or action based.
If it is financially and Kazza pays then Kazza is in the clear.
If the judge says Close your system. Then Kazza can say, sure for all Californian's we will close the system. At that point the system is "shutdown" for the jurisdiction of the Californian justice system. And again Kazza is in the clear. How does Kazza enforce this? Change the license and filter out California IP's.
1) Use COM to incorporate every Active Document Web Browser there is 2) Use IE as a basis for the rendering 3) Use those annoying little characters that MS calls agents 4) Develop a compression utility that works on the server as a proxy.
My guess is that his compression is partially lossless, meaning some data gets lost. I am guessing that is why when he has 7x compression the system crashes. Below that the system "ignores" the lost data.
So what I think is unique with this browser is that it is an all in one solution that probably is pretty user friendly. And remember what amazes people is not the tech, but the presentation of the tech....
Judge finds Kazza guilty. Judge can only dictate on terms for California. Kazza adds clause that only non-Californian's can use this service.
Result? Whoever runs Kazza is legal because the law is only applies to Californians. Therefore anybody from Kazza can show up in California for whatever reason they want.
You are right, by default contract law dictates that you should know what you are doing. And myself as an engineer I have that problem. I can be held legally liable if I give advice, even if it is free.
BUT and this is what I also see. If people are not satisfied, then no matter how much we know it is a bad idea it will happen. In industry, when there is a problem that cannot be managed by the industry, regulations start. They start because people want some quality and control. And no matter how much we whine, the law makers will not care.
THEREFORE, it is up to us to fix it!
Been there, done that, got the T-Shirt
on
Assorted CES Gizmos
·
· Score: 3, Informative
In Europe it is called RDS. Every (or almost every) car radio can pick up RDS. RDS is a one way digital broadcasting system used to disseminate information about traffic jams, and other news. Now some radio stations are using it to broadcast the name of the song that is currently playing.
Is it clever? Absolutely. Is it original? The only trick now is to get FM stations to broadcast more content.
Sept 11 was an exception to the rule of terrorists. If you look at Eta, IRA, Isalamic Radicals, and other groups they either resort to kidnappings, isolated murders or bombs. Why bombs? Because bombs are effective, simple to implement and can be done in a split second without damage control. A bomb has a huge element of surprise, without requiring much external intervention.
So please next time take a look at what terrorists have done!
If you want to look at it, then actually the BSD license has won. Because the biggest driver of Linux is Apache, Perl and PHP which each are NON-GPL licenses.
In terms of GNOME. It is not there yet, as compared to LAMP.
Yes but when I was at a Linux conference the CEO of Redhat asked who is using Redhat 8.0. And then he asked who paid for it. All the hands lowered. And do you know what one person said why he did not buy the product? Because he did a couple of beta downloads and tests. Gee whiz, a couple of bug reports and you do not need to buy product anymore.
Yes Redhat is profitable, but I saw from the question by the CEO of Redhat that he would like people to actually start buying more product. Because it costs to develop product.
Open Source users are takers. They do not contribute back. That is the crux of the problem of OSS. Who pays back? Right now OSS is interesting and companies are doing it. But is it because of MS? And if it is a knee jerk reaction to MS then this is NOT good.
BTW I like OSS, but I am just thinking of the longer term ramifications. Eg, the day after MS falls.
Of course the GPL says nothing about paying the producers. Because you do not have to pay the producer.
Yes there is a ton of GPL, but in the same token there is thousands of tons shareware, etc.
MS is worried because you are threatening their model. What worries me is not that MS is threatened. Basically I really do not care about MS, it is their problem. What I care about is the long term health of the software industry.
Lets play out the scenario. OSS "wins" and everybody is OSS happy (not unrealistic). And we end up paying a fraction of the cost of software originally.
Lets do the math:
MS software tax : 1000 USD per year OSS software tax : 100 USD per year
900 USD has just gone missing. Ok there is an arugment that MS is overcharging. So lets add the following:
Competitors software tax : 500 USD per year
Now there is still 400 USD missing. And this is where I see the problem. While one may think that the 400 USD is money wasted, it is actually money that goes in the economic food chain.
One idea could be that the 400 USD moved into something else, which could be consultants or hardware. Ok so lets say that the 400 USD moved elsewhere eg consultants hardware.
What that means is that you are paying 400 USD for somebody NOT to write software. That means the developer does not get paid and that the software industry as a whole slows down.
Now there is another factor to consider. If people pay as a whole a certain amount then the entire amount of money going to the software developer will increase since there are less redundent projects. This is good. BUT it relies on the fact that the end user needs to pay something because OSS is not free software.....
I agree with you as well. And here is the crux of the problem. It is an extreme issue either way. In the case of closed source licenses you do not entirely get shafted because there is always another person writing a piece of software to do the same thing.
For example I have managed to switch off MS software other than one notebook where I NEED to run XP (support reasons). But otherwise I managed to find cheap alternatives.
In closed source the developer does get paid. In Open Source they do not. And therefore Oss has become an indirect mechanism. In other words so long as we see the need to support OSS we will.
Again I am not arguing that closed source is better. But that we in the OSS community need to take the stance that OSS is NOT free, but it costs. The difference is that we can pay as we can....
That is the problem. I am a consultant and I am tend to take more than give back to Open Source. Ok I give free demos and free material on how to use some Open Source, but I actually do not develop the software.
And that is the problem. Everybody is using Open Source to their advantage, but who is actually developing?
Ok folks I have my asbestos suit on, and here I go....
The GPL has some serious issues. While Linux has been progressing nicely and people have been making money, who is paying the developer?
At the beginning of 2002 I had a BOF at a conference and the topic was Open Source. It was well attended about 40 people, considering it was late at night. But we discussed the issue for a couple of hours. And the conclusion we came on is that Open Source is good for everybody, but the developer.
Open Source is good for the consultant, good for the book author of "professional" books, good for hardware manufacturers, etc. But licenses like the GPL are not good for the developers who actually write the code. Those people cannot get paid what they are due. This is what closed source did.
And we concluded that Open Source can continue so long as as investment is made into the Open Source. But when people cut corners they so easily say, "Ah let the other person take care of that". Basically Open Source promotes takers and not givers. The original Open Source die hards are givers. But the Open Sourcers today are takers. Look at Mandrake, for an example of the problems...
While I hate to admit it, an Open Source tax should be introduced. Without a base investment long term OSS will have issues.....
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, but I do not trust a TransAM worth a darn. Why? Once when I was in San Diego I rented a high end Camero and drove into the desert. I drove fast (so fast) that my partner actually became nervous. I loved it because it was mountain roads, with plenty of curves. Then one curve I almost ran into a cliff. I managed to gain control just in the knick in time.
I was puzzled as to what happened. So I looked at the brakes because they were not working anymore. The problem was that because of my driving my brakes overheated and lost traction due to the heat.
At that point I just thought, Crap car.... Plenty of horsepower in a snail carriage.
You see I live in Europe and drive a sports car at about 155 MPH (German Autobahn). And Cameros and TransAm's are NOT built for those types of speed. Corvette, yes, Viper OH YEAH BABY yes... Actually you have not seen horsepower until you see a Viper take off on the Autobahn. Your jaw just drops. But that is it for North American performance cars.
Now about beating a Porsche? I can beat Porsche's as well. It depends on the model. A Boxer no problem. A Porsche S2? NOT A CHANCE.... Also come to the Nuernberg Ring and then we will talk. Because the boys and girls that race on the Nuernberg ring REALLY race and drive fast....
The problem is the entire management. Look at the following http://www.mandrakesoft.com/company/about/executiv es
.
What do they talk about? They first mention how "intelligent" they are and then talk about what they did. THAT IS WHAT IS WRONG WITH MANDRAKE...
I could say, "I studied at one of the best engineering schools in North America" (I actually did) as well. But the reality is that, this gets me nowhere (as it should) because it is actions that convince! Because while education at a good school helps, there are oodles of self taught programmers that are just as good or better than the "best schools".
You know the immigration thing does bother me. I am university educated (Canadian) and so is my wife (both are engineers). But yet we cannot immigrate to the US. The best we can hope is an H1B, which, well you know is not great. We once tried to immigrate to the US. My wife got a job, but not me. They said that I would be restricted, etc, etc. And my wife only got a potential H1B or TN1.
Result? We moved to Europe. Ok it is easier since I am a German and there is no immigration issues, in the EU. But we live in Switzerland. Switzerland is not an immigration country, permits are hard to get and yet we can live here. It does look like my wife and I will be staying here until we retire.
It is wierd how life goes because we wanted to live in the US and ended up in Switzerland. But often I wonder what if....
As sad as it sounds. I always liked the US because it was the model of how things can be done and achieved in business and life.
But with the turn of the year 2000 and burst of the stock bubble, I am REALLY wondering if the US is going downhill. If you look at the laws that have been passed and the rights that have been taken away in the US you REALLY wonder.
This is not meant to be Anti-American since I am not Anti-American people. Americans are humans just like everybody else. You got idiots and you have nice people, just like anywhere else. But it seems that the establishment within the USA is going a bit wierd....
They could hurt Redhat, yes because Redhat is an American company. But I thought Mandrake was a French company? And I doubt that they patented using European patents. Likewise with Suse.
Do you know what is happening here? The US is starting to feed on itself. And people outside the US are starting to profit....
For example copyrights on specific music pieces in Europe expire and as such they are free to copy, but not in the US.
Interesting the Land of Free is turning into the land of the regulated lawyer! Actually sad!
What I am thinking is the following....
Lets say that you want to increase compression of some data. EG HTML. Could there not be a technique to speed things up? Sure there is, get rid of the spaces, remove some tags, etc.
Well lets say that with each compression technique there are levels of what can be thrown away. And maybe when he tweaks to level 7 he throws away too much. At that point the app does crash since he may be throwing away something interesting.
That was my point of partially lossless....
Of course it does. Lets say the judge finds them guilty. Well the order of the judge will be either financially or action based.
If it is financially and Kazza pays then Kazza is in the clear.
If the judge says Close your system. Then Kazza can say, sure for all Californian's we will close the system. At that point the system is "shutdown" for the jurisdiction of the Californian justice system. And again Kazza is in the clear. How does Kazza enforce this? Change the license and filter out California IP's.
I think you are confusing criminal law with civil law....
Criminal law has extradition, civil does not...
I think what he did was as follows:
1) Use COM to incorporate every Active Document Web Browser there is
2) Use IE as a basis for the rendering
3) Use those annoying little characters that MS calls agents
4) Develop a compression utility that works on the server as a proxy.
My guess is that his compression is partially lossless, meaning some data gets lost. I am guessing that is why when he has 7x compression the system crashes. Below that the system "ignores" the lost data.
So what I think is unique with this browser is that it is an all in one solution that probably is pretty user friendly. And remember what amazes people is not the tech, but the presentation of the tech....
Ok here is what is going to happen.
Judge finds Kazza guilty. Judge can only dictate on terms for California.
Kazza adds clause that only non-Californian's can use this service.
Result? Whoever runs Kazza is legal because the law is only applies to Californians. Therefore anybody from Kazza can show up in California for whatever reason they want.
Would you do it? Not likely...
Heeerrrreee Duuuuddddeee that is some good stuff you have been smoking...
Lets see, here where I am I can actually smoke weed without fear of the law. Therefore if I travel to the US, with my pot nothing will happen?
Oh yeah, right, forgot POT is ILLEGAL in the US!
Your dad probably was a nice person, but the world has become global.
Yeah but my DVD drive is code less.....
They are very popular here in Europe!
The point is that the consumer chose DVD drives without encryption built in.
You are right, by default contract law dictates that you should know what you are doing. And myself as an engineer I have that problem. I can be held legally liable if I give advice, even if it is free.
BUT and this is what I also see. If people are not satisfied, then no matter how much we know it is a bad idea it will happen. In industry, when there is a problem that cannot be managed by the industry, regulations start. They start because people want some quality and control. And no matter how much we whine, the law makers will not care.
THEREFORE, it is up to us to fix it!
In Europe it is called RDS. Every (or almost every) car radio can pick up RDS. RDS is a one way digital broadcasting system used to disseminate information about traffic jams, and other news. Now some radio stations are using it to broadcast the name of the song that is currently playing.
Is it clever? Absolutely. Is it original? The only trick now is to get FM stations to broadcast more content.
Me idiot??? Na ja...
Sept 11 was an exception to the rule of terrorists. If you look at Eta, IRA, Isalamic Radicals, and other groups they either resort to kidnappings, isolated murders or bombs. Why bombs? Because bombs are effective, simple to implement and can be done in a split second without damage control. A bomb has a huge element of surprise, without requiring much external intervention.
So please next time take a look at what terrorists have done!
Ok, fine, but I think somebody has been watching too much RoboCop!
Terrorists usually attack by:
1) Blowing themselves up
2) Blowing a truck up
3) Blowing a building up
Now as sad as these terrorists are, how exactly is this supposed to stop terrorists blowing things up?
Outside of that people have not been reduced to chaotic factors shown so often in movies.
A publicity stunt? Ok, But to prove what? How to beat the Discovery channel Monster garage crew?
;)
Lets put it this way. If my army had to rely on this thing, I would be thinking of moving.
Oh wait I already did from Canada to Switzerland.
What I am wondering about is why they did not even use a Hummer as a basis. A chevy? Come on people who was designing this thing?
I seriously think somebody had too much time and money and watched too much Discovery Channel...
[sarcasm]That is why you have water spray down trucks used throughout the rest of world whenever there are riots[/sarcasm]
I mean if there is one thing that Europe excels at it is riots and how to control them. Not to say that it is a good thing though!
If you want to look at it, then actually the BSD license has won. Because the biggest driver of Linux is Apache, Perl and PHP which each are NON-GPL licenses.
In terms of GNOME. It is not there yet, as compared to LAMP.
Yes but when I was at a Linux conference the CEO of Redhat asked who is using Redhat 8.0. And then he asked who paid for it. All the hands lowered. And do you know what one person said why he did not buy the product? Because he did a couple of beta downloads and tests. Gee whiz, a couple of bug reports and you do not need to buy product anymore.
Yes Redhat is profitable, but I saw from the question by the CEO of Redhat that he would like people to actually start buying more product. Because it costs to develop product.
Open Source users are takers. They do not contribute back. That is the crux of the problem of OSS. Who pays back? Right now OSS is interesting and companies are doing it. But is it because of MS? And if it is a knee jerk reaction to MS then this is NOT good.
BTW I like OSS, but I am just thinking of the longer term ramifications. Eg, the day after MS falls.
Of course the GPL says nothing about paying the producers. Because you do not have to pay the producer.
Yes there is a ton of GPL, but in the same token there is thousands of tons shareware, etc.
MS is worried because you are threatening their model. What worries me is not that MS is threatened. Basically I really do not care about MS, it is their problem. What I care about is the long term health of the software industry.
Lets play out the scenario. OSS "wins" and everybody is OSS happy (not unrealistic). And we end up paying a fraction of the cost of software originally.
Lets do the math:
MS software tax : 1000 USD per year
OSS software tax : 100 USD per year
900 USD has just gone missing. Ok there is an arugment that MS is overcharging. So lets add the following:
Competitors software tax : 500 USD per year
Now there is still 400 USD missing. And this is where I see the problem. While one may think that the 400 USD is money wasted, it is actually money that goes in the economic food chain.
One idea could be that the 400 USD moved into something else, which could be consultants or hardware. Ok so lets say that the 400 USD moved elsewhere eg consultants hardware.
What that means is that you are paying 400 USD for somebody NOT to write software. That means the developer does not get paid and that the software industry as a whole slows down.
Now there is another factor to consider. If people pay as a whole a certain amount then the entire amount of money going to the software developer will increase since there are less redundent projects. This is good. BUT it relies on the fact that the end user needs to pay something because OSS is not free software.....
I agree with you as well. And here is the crux of the problem. It is an extreme issue either way. In the case of closed source licenses you do not entirely get shafted because there is always another person writing a piece of software to do the same thing.
For example I have managed to switch off MS software other than one notebook where I NEED to run XP (support reasons). But otherwise I managed to find cheap alternatives.
In closed source the developer does get paid. In Open Source they do not. And therefore Oss has become an indirect mechanism. In other words so long as we see the need to support OSS we will.
Again I am not arguing that closed source is better. But that we in the OSS community need to take the stance that OSS is NOT free, but it costs. The difference is that we can pay as we can....
No the consultant != developer...
That is the problem. I am a consultant and I am tend to take more than give back to Open Source. Ok I give free demos and free material on how to use some Open Source, but I actually do not develop the software.
And that is the problem. Everybody is using Open Source to their advantage, but who is actually developing?
Ok folks I have my asbestos suit on, and here I go....
The GPL has some serious issues. While Linux has been progressing nicely and people have been making money, who is paying the developer?
At the beginning of 2002 I had a BOF at a conference and the topic was Open Source. It was well attended about 40 people, considering it was late at night. But we discussed the issue for a couple of hours. And the conclusion we came on is that Open Source is good for everybody, but the developer.
Open Source is good for the consultant, good for the book author of "professional" books, good for hardware manufacturers, etc. But licenses like the GPL are not good for the developers who actually write the code. Those people cannot get paid what they are due. This is what closed source did.
And we concluded that Open Source can continue so long as as investment is made into the Open Source. But when people cut corners they so easily say, "Ah let the other person take care of that". Basically Open Source promotes takers and not givers. The original Open Source die hards are givers. But the Open Sourcers today are takers. Look at Mandrake, for an example of the problems...
While I hate to admit it, an Open Source tax should be introduced. Without a base investment long term OSS will have issues.....
Ok I am optmistic and think it will work out....