His point about web design is just that, a point about web design. Of course a sys admin is maintaining the machine, the OS, the web server, and any ancillary daemons or services required to keep the site running. A programmer probably wrote the back end too. Neither of those guys should normally be designing the web site though. In a really small, broke company maybe, or if you happen to have a really creative and talented designer who also happens to be your sys admin. In the vast majority of cases though, design is a marketing/creative function not an IT function. And yes plenty of large commercial sites had awful initial attempts at designs because no one realized this.
I can see his point here too. Yes, the infrastructure of the monitoring will be handled by IT. Yes, due to the nature of IT's rights and privileges on systems they maintain, chances are they will be able to see the logs (just as a sysadmin could change the web site, but they're not generally supposed to), but as a matter of policy it should not be their job to examine logs. That should be a management or HR function. I do agree that constant monitoring of logs when there's no reason to suspect any problems is kinda overkill regardless.
1. The company's connection is the company's, not yours. They have a right to prevent its use for non-work purposes if they choose to do so. (Although attempting to do so entirely is absurdly draconian, at least if you're not subject to DoD-type restrictions.)
Speaking as someone who works under DoD-type restrictions, some of what GP advocates is draconian far beyond the DoD, at least unclassified DoD resources. I'm quite allowed to access web-mail and social networking sites on my DoD owned computer. I'm doing so right now in fact. Of course classified systems are a different matter, but those aren't connected to the Internet at all.
Actually, it doesn't work like that (or rather, it normally doesn't). While technically HP could sue to have the patent reassigned to them, I've never heard of that being done. What's more common is for the current patent holder (Amazon) to sue an infringing party (say, Facebook) to either make them cease and desist use of the patented technology or pay whatever license fees the holder wishes. In our hypothetical case Facebook could then defend themselves by either proving that they not infringing the patent (our service doesn't do what the patent covers), or by getting the court to invalidate the patent. This is usually where "Prior Art" enter the picture. One of the ways to prove a patent is in valid is to prove that someone else already did it, or did something so close as to be indistinguishable.
In this case, Facebook would simply have to bring up any (or all) of the many previous versions of "social networking" that did things similar to what Amazon has patented. Assuming the courts bought this argument, HP wouldn't "get" the patent, it would simply cease to be a valid patent at all. To me it seem pretty obvious most or all of this stuff had been done prior to 1998, often in the same places; but I'm not a judge or even a lawyer. That's the problem with a "Prior Art" or "Obviousness" argument to invalidate a patent, if the judge or jury disagree that what you present as "Prior Art" actually is the same thing, you don't win.
You quote "the Internet" several times, but the abstract only says a "network". By definition a "network" is merely two or more computer systems talking to each other. Any BBS or old style pre-internet "Online Service" should qualify.
OK, I was a member of Quantum Link, a Commodore 64 and 128 super-BBS which was the predecessor of AOL. It was founded in 1985, had hundred of thousands of members, and they could search for each other based on profiles and information contained therein. We could chat, send each other messages, even play cooperative games. It may have been a little to simplistic to fully qualify as "prior art", but certainly by the early 90's after it had morphed into AOL, and started allowing non-Commodore computers in, it did everything described.
Yeah, I was thinking of the original "walled garden" ISPs like AOL and Compuserve. I don't see any way that Amazon could hope to defend such a broad patent when the earliest "social network" I can remember joining was "Quantum-Link" (proto-AOL) on my Commodore 64-C in the late 80's.
Granted, it wasn't the Internet, but I don't see where the patent specifies "Internet", merely "network". Q-Link was clearly a network.
Technology is coming along at such a fast pace that you don't need a studio to make a movie, you don't need theaters to make a profit.
I think you're ignoring reality here. Can you record music without a label? Sure. Can you make and distribute visual art without a backer? Again, no problem. But a movie? Do you have any idea what those cost to make? You have to pay actors, set designers, cameramen, buy sets, buy cameras, buy rail systems to put the camera's on, feed everyone, pay for any special effects (and yes even low budget movies usually have at least some special effects, not fully computer rendered aliens or anything, but special effects), buy editing time (or pay for for a few high end Macs with Final Cut Pro)... and that just scratches the surface.
I went to the premiere of a low budget art flick about post-Katrina New Orleans a few year back. It was call "Low and Behold" and it was pretty good. This guy got a grant to make the movie. He used equipment provided by the University of New Orleans Theater Department. His actors worked for a take of the hopeful eventual profits (he was the star, there was only one other major character and one minor character. The minor character was his uncle, both in the movie and for real). He only rented two sets. One was the apartment where he and his uncle lived, one the destroyed house of the other major character (which he actually got for free. They just used one of the hundred of abandoned houses in the flood zone). Everything was filmed on public streets or in a bar that allowed it during their off hours for the publicity. The movie cost a bit over 100K to make. His grant was only 100K, so he had to spend 10-15K of his own money.
This is the lowest possible budget movie. The vast majority of the expenses in equipment and labor were paid for him or volunteered. Set design was basically moving some furniture around in a few buildings. He provided his own script, direction and acting. The whole thing was the definition of shoestring budget, and it cost over $100,000. Had it not been being made about a hot button issue of the day, it probably wouldn't have gotten the grant and would never been made.
A camcorder and Microsoft Maker Maker isn't a movie by the way. Not in any meaningful way. It's a You-Tube video. It's not the same thing. One of the most professional and well known "inexpensive" web productions ever, "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog", cost over $200,000 to make, ran less than an hour, had essentially no labor cost (everybody worked for a share of the profits, which is fine if you happen to be Joss Whedon, be friends with half the talent in Hollywood, and have bankable name recognition) and used mostly equipment that the all star cast and crew had available because of who they are and what they do. Even assuming some less famous director could get that kind of talent together on the promise of hopeful eventual profits, and get equipment, $200K is outside most people's budget.
I think it reasonable to both point out that there are valid points in the company's position, AND point out that it in no way compares to Einstein's letter. There are lots of sound economic and moral reasons that the United States should be investing more money in alternative energy research, including (IMO) public money. Even opponents of doing so probably would not disagree that these reasons exist (even if that person thought there were MORE compelling reasons to do otherwise). Never the less, this meeting was clearly a result of large corporations trying to find ways to have the government pay for some of the research that they'd like to do, but are finding a hard time justifying in terms of short term profits. Not that this is a bad thing, but it's hardly the heroic stand taken by Einstein in his letter to FDR.
I think we should devote more funds to alternative energy research. I think that our dependence on petroleum based energy will bite us, hard, in the coming decades and we must make efforts to reduce that dependence. I think it's a valuable use of public funds, in no small part because the nature of research will likely result in a short term money sink until it's viable to commercialize. This is exactly the sort of research that large corporations have a very hard time justifying to stock holders no matter how much individuals inside the company may want to see it happen. Despite that, I don't see the comparison between a bunch of companies that want to invest in alternative energy trying to get the government to pay for it, and the dire warnings of a lone scientist trying to get the government to understand a threat it could barely even envision.
Technically they're only getting revenue from the first page of a multi-page article, but you're still right that it's more than they would get with Ad-Block installed.
Stories like this perhaps, comments like the one we are all replying to not so much. For one thing, this comment is on a web site where if you *don't* understand the trade offs that between iPhone and most of the other major options out there, you've probably been stuck on a desert island with no Internet access for the last 3 years. I don't need to be "informed" of the weakness of my (currently) chosen platform, and neither, I think, do any other iPhone owners reading Slashdot. I've chosen to use an iPhone because it's the best user experience for a phone I've encountered (so far) and it doesn't lock down or screw up anything that I find important or necessary (so far). That may change in future, but for the moment I'm both happy with my choice and aware of its shortcomings, thank you.
Which brings to me to my second point, which I'll admit is not as relevant to the current comment chain. Many if not most of these sort of comments include an obligatory reference to "fanbois", "cults", "morons", "reality distortion fields", etc. This thread has several such comments (though not the original poster). It's irritating to say the least, and tends to make people defensive. Personally, I take a very practical approach to technology. I use Free Software, Open Source Software, closed source software, or DRM encumbered software as I see fit based on the effectiveness of the tool, and cost-benefit ratio. Right now, for me, the cost of using an iPhone in freedom to do certain things that I didn't really want to do anyway is outweighed by the benefit of using a tool that accomplishes what I want it to in the most elegant way I've seen on a phone.
Long story short, I appreciate the need for stories like this. I appreciate comments that further discussion of why this was an appropriate or inappropriate action by Apple (personally I think it was bloody stupid, but that's neither here nor there). I don't appreciate comments who's tone and content basically boil down to "Ha ha I'm smarter that you to have bought this other phone." I don't really particularly care that the App Store forbids naked people. If I want porn on my iPhone it has a web browser, PDF viewer, or I can download the free B&N or Amazon e-book clients. It's a silly rule, but it affects me not at all in my day to day life. If it starts to I'll change platforms.
I wasn't talking about the devices. There's iPhone/Pod/Pad (hereafter generically iPhone) readers for the device formats. Even if Apple becomes the sole provider of all things digital, there are several pieces of software on the device (Web browser not the least of them) over which Apple has limited or no control of content. There are iPhone Apps that let it work as a Nook ("B&N eReader") or Kindle (creatively enough "Kindle"), and it can handle PDFs and web pages with built in software. There are also half a dozen Apps for doing some basic PDF modification on the fly.
Apple is trying to become a primary conduit for digital media; if they succeed, then we are stuck with their censorship rules.
It'll never happen. Let's assume for a moment that iPhones are SOOO great that everyone gets one. It's not showing any signs of happening, but we'll play in never-never land. Ohes noes! Apple is the sole source of digital media! Except that they have a Kindle reader, a PDF reader, a Barnes and Noble e-book reader, and a web browser. Any of which can be used as an alternate publishing route.
He's not ignoring the price tag, he's wondering how it's any different from schools requiring similar expenditures on Windows laptops (as they often do). It's an interesting question. The laptops that schools require students to purchase are usually between seven and nine hundred dollars, so while this may be on the outside edge of that price, it's not terribly onerous in comparison. Before you say "But those students could buy any laptop they want, it's just a Windows laptop after all", my (admittedly limited) experience is that this is not the case. The schools require a particular brand and model, and often put their own OS and application stack on the machines. In a few cases I've read about, they even lock the students and their families out of the administrator functions of the systems. This may or may not be the common practice I don't know, but I do know it happens.
If the school wants to issue locked down computers I can certainly see that, but forcing parents to spend a bit less than a thousand dollars on a computer, then treating it as if it were school property seems a bit extreme.
I think the point of the article is not to decry the lack of billion dollar Open Source companies, but rather to point out to Open Source companies that they are unlikely to ever be billion dollar companies. So stop trying to be, do what you do, do it well, and carve out your niche. Companies can kill themselves by aiming too high, as well as by aiming too low. Do your research, figure out exactly what you'll need to ship for a billion dollars in revenue. Is it realistic to expect to ship that? No? What about 500 million, is that realistic? etc.
Now see I always read "Zero Day" as being a vulnerability that either not found until it was exploited in the wild, or released before the vendor had a patch in place. In other words the vendor has "zero days" in which to patch the bug before it is or could potentially be exploited. Strictly speaking this bug would only qualified as "Zero Day" if the guy had released it publicly before or at the same time as he notified Microsoft; but an argument can be made that since there isn't yet a patch, and the vulnerability is in the wild, MS still has "zero days" to react. Regardless, much as I dislike Microsoft this was an asshole thing to do. He knows they release major patches on "Patch Tuesday", at least give them that long to fix it. As one analyst pointed out, he's hurting his company's customers nearly as much as he's hurting Microsoft.
A great deal of what you say is true, but is true mainly for circtuitous reasons. Some of it is false. The level of complexity between OSX and Windows is perfectly compareable. One of the reasons that OSX has had such a relatively good reputation for stabiltiy is the fact that they limit configurations and (here's the key) write or modify the drivers that they use for those configurations. If Apple were willing to allow OSX to be put on non-Apple hardware, it would simply be a matter of producing drivers. Microsoft doesn't produce drivers, at least not for the vast majority of the hardware they run on. The foist that job on the hardware vendors and they get away with it becasue they are so domintant that no vendor wants to not have ther hardware work in Windows. Essentially, Windows works on more stuff for two reasons: 1) They allow vendors to produce drivers, and 2) Their dominance essentially forces vendors to produce drivers. One of the major reasons for the vastly imporoved stabilty of Windows in recent years is that Microsoft has been instisting on quality drivers (there are other reasons, but this is a big contributor).
Linux is seriously no more complicated to adminster than Windows now, at least not at the invidiual user level. I've been staggered recently by my latest Ubuntu install. While I use the command line becasue I'm comfortable with it and can accomplish many tasks more quickly with it, it has become largely unecesary. There are three major reasons that Linux is unsuitable for "Joe User" at this point.
First, it has driver support problems. Since it's not hugely dominant in the OS field, it can't force ventdors to provide drivers in a timely manner or at all. Second, application support. This is similar to the driver problem. Third, lack of preinstallation by OEMS. As has often been said, installing Windows from scratch is not really any harder or eaiser than installing Linux from scratch. It's just that most people never do either. They simply buy a preinstalled machine (with Windows). All three of these problems relate to the Microsoft's dominance of the market and have little to do with the quality of Linux or its configuaration and administration tools. Since you forgive Microsoft for vendor problems that "aren't [its] fault" I assume you'll do the same for Linux.
There was a substantial discussion of the "Enterprise Readiness" of Mac and Unix machines in another thread yesterday. This is largely a Red Herring. Capable admins can manage all the things that Active Directory does in a Mac, Unix, or heterogeneous Mac/Unix enviroments. The only things that create some problems are an equivilant to Group Policy Editor, which can be worked around, and the face that while all the Mac and Unix machines will happilly share directory data and files with each other Mircrosoft refuses to play ball. So anytime you you have an enviroment that includes Macs, Unix machines, and Windows machines you usally wind up with the "Windows Domain" and the "Everybody else Domain." Of course other vendors can't be blamed for Mirosoft both refusing to use standards and refusing to publish how their own system works.
Essentially, nearly all the problems with migrating off of Windows in the Enterprise or the home boil down to: "Microsoft is so dominant in the market that we can't really change off of them." We can't get drivers... Why? Becasue once you've made one driver that works on 90% of the computers in the world, why bother to make another two or three to placate the other 10%? We can't get apps... Why? Becasue again, if you wrote one piece of software and it works on 90% of the computer in the world, why bother to port it three or four times to get a pitance more systems? These systems won't integrate into out enterprise IT environment... Why? Becasue the vendor that sold them is so domiant that it doesn't need to make make sure it's compatible with anyone else. You aren't *supposed* to have a heterogeneous environment silly. We provide everything you need.
Re:XP is like that faint smell of piss - it's ther
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Actually I was responding to a specific post asking about how to solve specific problems in a Unix environment. I address your point here, in another comment and I agree with you. Apps are the biggest problem with a mass migration to Unix. You can reduce the impact of this problem by switching to Macs, but though there are Macs versions of many specialist software packages, there are many others without Mac versions. Also switching to macs doesn't really save much money, and in the short term will cost you more. All hardware will have to be replaced rather than maybe needing an upgrade, and some software will have to have a Mac version purchased separately. Stuff like 3Ds Max will simply transfer your licenses, but companies like Microsoft (Office) and Adobe consider their Mac versions completely different software and will make you purchase new copies. As I mention in the linked post I looked into this pretty heavily not long ago.
As the OP that all of this responds too I both agree and disagree with you. On the one hand you are correct that there are very few things that you can do with GPE that you can't do on most modern Unixes. GP has obviously never really tried to duplicate the things he can do in GPE, or he would have realized this. 2 years ago I would have agreed with him completely, but two years in a classified environment locking down Linux boxes far beyond any reasonable enterprise standard has taught me otherwise.
Having said that, assuming a homogeneous Windows environment (a big assumption I'll grant you) this stuff is much easier in Active Directory. With an AD server you open GPE in one place, click or unclick a check box, and you're done. The idea that GPE might lack some particular option is a bit a of a Red Herring. It does, occasionally lack something, but then I've wanted to do things in Unix systems that no amount of finegaling text files would accomplish. AD's biggest weakness is that it's totally unable to manage anything other than Windows boxes.
Unix systems distribute the GPE sorts of configurations to hundreds of special purpose text files, and any time you wish to try to do something new you have to figure out where it is and how to do it. Often, if you have more than one type of Unix box, the required files are in different places, have different names, and/or use different syntax. Sometimes you have to do the same thing in more than one place.
An example: We are required by the government to place a banner on every system that every person who logs in either remotely or locally will see, informing them that they are logging into a government system. In Red Hat this requires editing/etc/issues,/etc/issues.net,/etc/motd,/etc/gdm/custom.conf,/etc/sshd_config, and for good measure we put something in/etc/gdm/PreSession that requires GUI users to acknowledge it. Some of this is redundant or unnecessary if users aren't using certain services of course. I have a script that does all of this, but somewhere someone had to figure all of that out and design a guideline that told you which files you had to edit. Also I had to write the script, which is a bit fiddly since all of the edits are slightly different bases on Classification and Caveat of the machine question. The script has to be run on every new machine, or rsync has to be setup to replicate the files in question. By comparison in Windows someone once put two checks in check boxes, and provided a link to a Jpeg of the warning. Now every box that joins the domain simply does what we want it to.
So, like I said, it's totally manageable to do Enterprise level policy management on Unix boxes. It's not even frightfully hard if you know what you're doing. It's by no means as easy as managing Windows through Active Directory though, and that's definitely a barrier to entry for many enterprise class customers. Not an insurmountable barrier, but a barrier.
This... Looks really interesting. I'm bookmarking it for sure. If i wind up taking the new job I've been offered in DC I see LOTS of possible uses here.
Re:I'm not sure why anybody would listen to Gartne
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No, it means you get no security updates. Windows. With. No. Security. Updates. Does this seem smart to you? I wouldn't be comfortable with any OS that wasn't getting security updates, but especially not Windows. All it takes is a one guy discovering some huge security hole a month after updates stop and you're dead in the water. Then you have no choice but either do the world's fastest turnaround update or reinstall XP and hope it doesn't happen again since the hole won't be patched.
I'm not going to say that any Unix system has the fine grained level of control that you can get from group policy editor, but you can exert MUCH more control than most people realize. I currently work in classified environment, and I'm often amazed by just how much you can do to Unix boxes with fiddly controls. Like I say in my earlier post, the trick is figuring out, in any individual version of Unix, whether you can do something and how to do it. 9 times out of 10 the answer to the first question is yes... the answer to the second may take a while. There's no one stop shop like the policy editor, which is definite disadvantage sometimes. On the other hand, very few even Enterprise level IT groups us all of the things you can do with GPE, and most of the common stuff is pretty easy in most Unixes.
This is no doubt true in some cases, but no the majority. I've have people contact me very upset over time sensitive work that they really wanted to get done because of issues like this. People here do not understand the extent to which many users have no idea why they do things. They simply follow routines and procedures. Often largely tied to visual clues that they themselves may be unaware they rely on.
Re:XP is productive
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Really? OK, I posted earlier about all the reasons that moving to *nix from Windows is hard, but, well, these are none of them. Every problem you list has at least one often more solutions in the Unix world:
File sharing: Several options. Assuming all Unix machines, NFS is by far the easiest. As long as all users are authenticating off the same directory their UIDs will match between systems. This is the "go to" Unix file sharing system, but there's other options. You can use Samba of course, and there's a few nifty distributed file systems out there that are starting to get mature. The first two options will work on any Unix system including Macs. The distributed solutions are spottier in what they support, being often new.
Centralized Login: Two major solutions. LDAP and NIS+. LDAP is by far the more modern and and scalable, though it can be slightly tricky to set up. Very slightly, nothing any half competent admin can't figure out. Original NIS is also an option, but is getting long in the tooth and has some security problems. Macs are perfectly capable of using LDAP, and I assume NIS as well, though I've never tried
Policy management: This is a little less defined in the Unix world than it is in Windows, but still manageable. Most of these policies are managed by various text files in Unix, so what I typically do is run a script when I first install them to set everything the way I want it. In the unlikely event I need to make a change I just change one system and propagate it to all the others. I have a script that copies a file where ever it needs to go on every machine in the network. You can also automate this through rsync though I've never personally bothered to set this up. I've never run a network complicated enough to really need it. The hard part here is if you have a heterogeneous Unix environment, since nearly all Unix's insist on using different files and different syntax to manage this stuff. I'll admit this is a slightly weak area, but definitely manageable.
Update Management: It's trivial to setup a local repository for any *nix repository system I am aware of. Setup you client to update to the local repository and test updates before you put them on the repo server.
Mostly this stuff is trivial in Unix/Mac environments. When I manage heterogeneous networks my problem is usually getting the Windows boxes to play nice with everyone else. Unix and Mac machines will all happily share files and directory data with each other, even across different OS's and hardware platforms, while the Windows boxes insist on playing their own little game. Samba helps with file sharing, but getting everyone to log in against the same network shared directory is an undertaking and a half.
I don't even know how you can ask that question. UI's aren't taught in college CS courses. UI design might be, but not UIs. Certainly not brand new just released "we moved everything around" UIs. He didn't say that he couldn't use the new system, just that it takes time and effort to learn where everything has been moved to and a certain amount of retraining muscle memory. Regardless I spent the majority of my master's in Computer Science in text editors. A few side trips to MS Office and Viso for Software Engineering design projects, and Mathematica for a signal processing class, but mostly a text editor.
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His point about web design is just that, a point about web design. Of course a sys admin is maintaining the machine, the OS, the web server, and any ancillary daemons or services required to keep the site running. A programmer probably wrote the back end too. Neither of those guys should normally be designing the web site though. In a really small, broke company maybe, or if you happen to have a really creative and talented designer who also happens to be your sys admin. In the vast majority of cases though, design is a marketing/creative function not an IT function. And yes plenty of large commercial sites had awful initial attempts at designs because no one realized this.
I can see his point here too. Yes, the infrastructure of the monitoring will be handled by IT. Yes, due to the nature of IT's rights and privileges on systems they maintain, chances are they will be able to see the logs (just as a sysadmin could change the web site, but they're not generally supposed to), but as a matter of policy it should not be their job to examine logs. That should be a management or HR function. I do agree that constant monitoring of logs when there's no reason to suspect any problems is kinda overkill regardless.
1. The company's connection is the company's, not yours. They have a right to prevent its use for non-work purposes if they choose to do so. (Although attempting to do so entirely is absurdly draconian, at least if you're not subject to DoD-type restrictions.)
Speaking as someone who works under DoD-type restrictions, some of what GP advocates is draconian far beyond the DoD, at least unclassified DoD resources. I'm quite allowed to access web-mail and social networking sites on my DoD owned computer. I'm doing so right now in fact. Of course classified systems are a different matter, but those aren't connected to the Internet at all.
Actually, it doesn't work like that (or rather, it normally doesn't). While technically HP could sue to have the patent reassigned to them, I've never heard of that being done. What's more common is for the current patent holder (Amazon) to sue an infringing party (say, Facebook) to either make them cease and desist use of the patented technology or pay whatever license fees the holder wishes. In our hypothetical case Facebook could then defend themselves by either proving that they not infringing the patent (our service doesn't do what the patent covers), or by getting the court to invalidate the patent. This is usually where "Prior Art" enter the picture. One of the ways to prove a patent is in valid is to prove that someone else already did it, or did something so close as to be indistinguishable.
In this case, Facebook would simply have to bring up any (or all) of the many previous versions of "social networking" that did things similar to what Amazon has patented. Assuming the courts bought this argument, HP wouldn't "get" the patent, it would simply cease to be a valid patent at all. To me it seem pretty obvious most or all of this stuff had been done prior to 1998, often in the same places; but I'm not a judge or even a lawyer. That's the problem with a "Prior Art" or "Obviousness" argument to invalidate a patent, if the judge or jury disagree that what you present as "Prior Art" actually is the same thing, you don't win.
You quote "the Internet" several times, but the abstract only says a "network". By definition a "network" is merely two or more computer systems talking to each other. Any BBS or old style pre-internet "Online Service" should qualify.
OK, I was a member of Quantum Link, a Commodore 64 and 128 super-BBS which was the predecessor of AOL. It was founded in 1985, had hundred of thousands of members, and they could search for each other based on profiles and information contained therein. We could chat, send each other messages, even play cooperative games. It may have been a little to simplistic to fully qualify as "prior art", but certainly by the early 90's after it had morphed into AOL, and started allowing non-Commodore computers in, it did everything described.
Yeah, I was thinking of the original "walled garden" ISPs like AOL and Compuserve. I don't see any way that Amazon could hope to defend such a broad patent when the earliest "social network" I can remember joining was "Quantum-Link" (proto-AOL) on my Commodore 64-C in the late 80's.
Granted, it wasn't the Internet, but I don't see where the patent specifies "Internet", merely "network". Q-Link was clearly a network.
Technology is coming along at such a fast pace that you don't need a studio to make a movie, you don't need theaters to make a profit.
I think you're ignoring reality here. Can you record music without a label? Sure. Can you make and distribute visual art without a backer? Again, no problem. But a movie? Do you have any idea what those cost to make? You have to pay actors, set designers, cameramen, buy sets, buy cameras, buy rail systems to put the camera's on, feed everyone, pay for any special effects (and yes even low budget movies usually have at least some special effects, not fully computer rendered aliens or anything, but special effects), buy editing time (or pay for for a few high end Macs with Final Cut Pro)... and that just scratches the surface.
I went to the premiere of a low budget art flick about post-Katrina New Orleans a few year back. It was call "Low and Behold" and it was pretty good. This guy got a grant to make the movie. He used equipment provided by the University of New Orleans Theater Department. His actors worked for a take of the hopeful eventual profits (he was the star, there was only one other major character and one minor character. The minor character was his uncle, both in the movie and for real). He only rented two sets. One was the apartment where he and his uncle lived, one the destroyed house of the other major character (which he actually got for free. They just used one of the hundred of abandoned houses in the flood zone). Everything was filmed on public streets or in a bar that allowed it during their off hours for the publicity. The movie cost a bit over 100K to make. His grant was only 100K, so he had to spend 10-15K of his own money.
This is the lowest possible budget movie. The vast majority of the expenses in equipment and labor were paid for him or volunteered. Set design was basically moving some furniture around in a few buildings. He provided his own script, direction and acting. The whole thing was the definition of shoestring budget, and it cost over $100,000. Had it not been being made about a hot button issue of the day, it probably wouldn't have gotten the grant and would never been made.
A camcorder and Microsoft Maker Maker isn't a movie by the way. Not in any meaningful way. It's a You-Tube video. It's not the same thing. One of the most professional and well known "inexpensive" web productions ever, "Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog", cost over $200,000 to make, ran less than an hour, had essentially no labor cost (everybody worked for a share of the profits, which is fine if you happen to be Joss Whedon, be friends with half the talent in Hollywood, and have bankable name recognition) and used mostly equipment that the all star cast and crew had available because of who they are and what they do. Even assuming some less famous director could get that kind of talent together on the promise of hopeful eventual profits, and get equipment, $200K is outside most people's budget.
I think it reasonable to both point out that there are valid points in the company's position, AND point out that it in no way compares to Einstein's letter. There are lots of sound economic and moral reasons that the United States should be investing more money in alternative energy research, including (IMO) public money. Even opponents of doing so probably would not disagree that these reasons exist (even if that person thought there were MORE compelling reasons to do otherwise). Never the less, this meeting was clearly a result of large corporations trying to find ways to have the government pay for some of the research that they'd like to do, but are finding a hard time justifying in terms of short term profits. Not that this is a bad thing, but it's hardly the heroic stand taken by Einstein in his letter to FDR.
I think we should devote more funds to alternative energy research. I think that our dependence on petroleum based energy will bite us, hard, in the coming decades and we must make efforts to reduce that dependence. I think it's a valuable use of public funds, in no small part because the nature of research will likely result in a short term money sink until it's viable to commercialize. This is exactly the sort of research that large corporations have a very hard time justifying to stock holders no matter how much individuals inside the company may want to see it happen. Despite that, I don't see the comparison between a bunch of companies that want to invest in alternative energy trying to get the government to pay for it, and the dire warnings of a lone scientist trying to get the government to understand a threat it could barely even envision.
Technically they're only getting revenue from the first page of a multi-page article, but you're still right that it's more than they would get with Ad-Block installed.
Stories like this perhaps, comments like the one we are all replying to not so much. For one thing, this comment is on a web site where if you *don't* understand the trade offs that between iPhone and most of the other major options out there, you've probably been stuck on a desert island with no Internet access for the last 3 years. I don't need to be "informed" of the weakness of my (currently) chosen platform, and neither, I think, do any other iPhone owners reading Slashdot. I've chosen to use an iPhone because it's the best user experience for a phone I've encountered (so far) and it doesn't lock down or screw up anything that I find important or necessary (so far). That may change in future, but for the moment I'm both happy with my choice and aware of its shortcomings, thank you.
Which brings to me to my second point, which I'll admit is not as relevant to the current comment chain. Many if not most of these sort of comments include an obligatory reference to "fanbois", "cults", "morons", "reality distortion fields", etc. This thread has several such comments (though not the original poster). It's irritating to say the least, and tends to make people defensive. Personally, I take a very practical approach to technology. I use Free Software, Open Source Software, closed source software, or DRM encumbered software as I see fit based on the effectiveness of the tool, and cost-benefit ratio. Right now, for me, the cost of using an iPhone in freedom to do certain things that I didn't really want to do anyway is outweighed by the benefit of using a tool that accomplishes what I want it to in the most elegant way I've seen on a phone.
Long story short, I appreciate the need for stories like this. I appreciate comments that further discussion of why this was an appropriate or inappropriate action by Apple (personally I think it was bloody stupid, but that's neither here nor there). I don't appreciate comments who's tone and content basically boil down to "Ha ha I'm smarter that you to have bought this other phone." I don't really particularly care that the App Store forbids naked people. If I want porn on my iPhone it has a web browser, PDF viewer, or I can download the free B&N or Amazon e-book clients. It's a silly rule, but it affects me not at all in my day to day life. If it starts to I'll change platforms.
I wasn't talking about the devices. There's iPhone/Pod/Pad (hereafter generically iPhone) readers for the device formats. Even if Apple becomes the sole provider of all things digital, there are several pieces of software on the device (Web browser not the least of them) over which Apple has limited or no control of content. There are iPhone Apps that let it work as a Nook ("B&N eReader") or Kindle (creatively enough "Kindle"), and it can handle PDFs and web pages with built in software. There are also half a dozen Apps for doing some basic PDF modification on the fly.
Apple is trying to become a primary conduit for digital media; if they succeed, then we are stuck with their censorship rules.
It'll never happen. Let's assume for a moment that iPhones are SOOO great that everyone gets one. It's not showing any signs of happening, but we'll play in never-never land. Ohes noes! Apple is the sole source of digital media! Except that they have a Kindle reader, a PDF reader, a Barnes and Noble e-book reader, and a web browser. Any of which can be used as an alternate publishing route.
He's not ignoring the price tag, he's wondering how it's any different from schools requiring similar expenditures on Windows laptops (as they often do). It's an interesting question. The laptops that schools require students to purchase are usually between seven and nine hundred dollars, so while this may be on the outside edge of that price, it's not terribly onerous in comparison. Before you say "But those students could buy any laptop they want, it's just a Windows laptop after all", my (admittedly limited) experience is that this is not the case. The schools require a particular brand and model, and often put their own OS and application stack on the machines. In a few cases I've read about, they even lock the students and their families out of the administrator functions of the systems. This may or may not be the common practice I don't know, but I do know it happens.
If the school wants to issue locked down computers I can certainly see that, but forcing parents to spend a bit less than a thousand dollars on a computer, then treating it as if it were school property seems a bit extreme.
I think the point of the article is not to decry the lack of billion dollar Open Source companies, but rather to point out to Open Source companies that they are unlikely to ever be billion dollar companies. So stop trying to be, do what you do, do it well, and carve out your niche. Companies can kill themselves by aiming too high, as well as by aiming too low. Do your research, figure out exactly what you'll need to ship for a billion dollars in revenue. Is it realistic to expect to ship that? No? What about 500 million, is that realistic? etc.
Now see I always read "Zero Day" as being a vulnerability that either not found until it was exploited in the wild, or released before the vendor had a patch in place. In other words the vendor has "zero days" in which to patch the bug before it is or could potentially be exploited. Strictly speaking this bug would only qualified as "Zero Day" if the guy had released it publicly before or at the same time as he notified Microsoft; but an argument can be made that since there isn't yet a patch, and the vulnerability is in the wild, MS still has "zero days" to react. Regardless, much as I dislike Microsoft this was an asshole thing to do. He knows they release major patches on "Patch Tuesday", at least give them that long to fix it. As one analyst pointed out, he's hurting his company's customers nearly as much as he's hurting Microsoft.
A great deal of what you say is true, but is true mainly for circtuitous reasons. Some of it is false. The level of complexity between OSX and Windows is perfectly compareable. One of the reasons that OSX has had such a relatively good reputation for stabiltiy is the fact that they limit configurations and (here's the key) write or modify the drivers that they use for those configurations. If Apple were willing to allow OSX to be put on non-Apple hardware, it would simply be a matter of producing drivers. Microsoft doesn't produce drivers, at least not for the vast majority of the hardware they run on. The foist that job on the hardware vendors and they get away with it becasue they are so domintant that no vendor wants to not have ther hardware work in Windows. Essentially, Windows works on more stuff for two reasons: 1) They allow vendors to produce drivers, and 2) Their dominance essentially forces vendors to produce drivers. One of the major reasons for the vastly imporoved stabilty of Windows in recent years is that Microsoft has been instisting on quality drivers (there are other reasons, but this is a big contributor).
Linux is seriously no more complicated to adminster than Windows now, at least not at the invidiual user level. I've been staggered recently by my latest Ubuntu install. While I use the command line becasue I'm comfortable with it and can accomplish many tasks more quickly with it, it has become largely unecesary. There are three major reasons that Linux is unsuitable for "Joe User" at this point.
First, it has driver support problems. Since it's not hugely dominant in the OS field, it can't force ventdors to provide drivers in a timely manner or at all. Second, application support. This is similar to the driver problem. Third, lack of preinstallation by OEMS. As has often been said, installing Windows from scratch is not really any harder or eaiser than installing Linux from scratch. It's just that most people never do either. They simply buy a preinstalled machine (with Windows). All three of these problems relate to the Microsoft's dominance of the market and have little to do with the quality of Linux or its configuaration and administration tools. Since you forgive Microsoft for vendor problems that "aren't [its] fault" I assume you'll do the same for Linux.
There was a substantial discussion of the "Enterprise Readiness" of Mac and Unix machines in another thread yesterday. This is largely a Red Herring. Capable admins can manage all the things that Active Directory does in a Mac, Unix, or heterogeneous Mac/Unix enviroments. The only things that create some problems are an equivilant to Group Policy Editor, which can be worked around, and the face that while all the Mac and Unix machines will happilly share directory data and files with each other Mircrosoft refuses to play ball. So anytime you you have an enviroment that includes Macs, Unix machines, and Windows machines you usally wind up with the "Windows Domain" and the "Everybody else Domain." Of course other vendors can't be blamed for Mirosoft both refusing to use standards and refusing to publish how their own system works.
Essentially, nearly all the problems with migrating off of Windows in the Enterprise or the home boil down to: "Microsoft is so dominant in the market that we can't really change off of them." We can't get drivers... Why? Becasue once you've made one driver that works on 90% of the computers in the world, why bother to make another two or three to placate the other 10%? We can't get apps... Why? Becasue again, if you wrote one piece of software and it works on 90% of the computer in the world, why bother to port it three or four times to get a pitance more systems? These systems won't integrate into out enterprise IT environment... Why? Becasue the vendor that sold them is so domiant that it doesn't need to make make sure it's compatible with anyone else. You aren't *supposed* to have a heterogeneous environment silly. We provide everything you need.
Actually I was responding to a specific post asking about how to solve specific problems in a Unix environment. I address your point here, in another comment and I agree with you. Apps are the biggest problem with a mass migration to Unix. You can reduce the impact of this problem by switching to Macs, but though there are Macs versions of many specialist software packages, there are many others without Mac versions. Also switching to macs doesn't really save much money, and in the short term will cost you more. All hardware will have to be replaced rather than maybe needing an upgrade, and some software will have to have a Mac version purchased separately. Stuff like 3Ds Max will simply transfer your licenses, but companies like Microsoft (Office) and Adobe consider their Mac versions completely different software and will make you purchase new copies. As I mention in the linked post I looked into this pretty heavily not long ago.
I think this is a new, though similar story. The link article was last edited 16 hours ago. I remember something similar a month or two ago though.
As the OP that all of this responds too I both agree and disagree with you. On the one hand you are correct that there are very few things that you can do with GPE that you can't do on most modern Unixes. GP has obviously never really tried to duplicate the things he can do in GPE, or he would have realized this. 2 years ago I would have agreed with him completely, but two years in a classified environment locking down Linux boxes far beyond any reasonable enterprise standard has taught me otherwise.
Having said that, assuming a homogeneous Windows environment (a big assumption I'll grant you) this stuff is much easier in Active Directory. With an AD server you open GPE in one place, click or unclick a check box, and you're done. The idea that GPE might lack some particular option is a bit a of a Red Herring. It does, occasionally lack something, but then I've wanted to do things in Unix systems that no amount of finegaling text files would accomplish. AD's biggest weakness is that it's totally unable to manage anything other than Windows boxes.
Unix systems distribute the GPE sorts of configurations to hundreds of special purpose text files, and any time you wish to try to do something new you have to figure out where it is and how to do it. Often, if you have more than one type of Unix box, the required files are in different places, have different names, and/or use different syntax. Sometimes you have to do the same thing in more than one place.
An example: We are required by the government to place a banner on every system that every person who logs in either remotely or locally will see, informing them that they are logging into a government system. In Red Hat this requires editing /etc/issues, /etc/issues.net, /etc/motd, /etc/gdm/custom.conf, /etc/sshd_config, and for good measure we put something in /etc/gdm/PreSession that requires GUI users to acknowledge it. Some of this is redundant or unnecessary if users aren't using certain services of course. I have a script that does all of this, but somewhere someone had to figure all of that out and design a guideline that told you which files you had to edit. Also I had to write the script, which is a bit fiddly since all of the edits are slightly different bases on Classification and Caveat of the machine question. The script has to be run on every new machine, or rsync has to be setup to replicate the files in question. By comparison in Windows someone once put two checks in check boxes, and provided a link to a Jpeg of the warning. Now every box that joins the domain simply does what we want it to.
So, like I said, it's totally manageable to do Enterprise level policy management on Unix boxes. It's not even frightfully hard if you know what you're doing. It's by no means as easy as managing Windows through Active Directory though, and that's definitely a barrier to entry for many enterprise class customers. Not an insurmountable barrier, but a barrier.
This... Looks really interesting. I'm bookmarking it for sure. If i wind up taking the new job I've been offered in DC I see LOTS of possible uses here.
No, it means you get no security updates. Windows. With. No. Security. Updates. Does this seem smart to you? I wouldn't be comfortable with any OS that wasn't getting security updates, but especially not Windows. All it takes is a one guy discovering some huge security hole a month after updates stop and you're dead in the water. Then you have no choice but either do the world's fastest turnaround update or reinstall XP and hope it doesn't happen again since the hole won't be patched.
I'm not going to say that any Unix system has the fine grained level of control that you can get from group policy editor, but you can exert MUCH more control than most people realize. I currently work in classified environment, and I'm often amazed by just how much you can do to Unix boxes with fiddly controls. Like I say in my earlier post, the trick is figuring out, in any individual version of Unix, whether you can do something and how to do it. 9 times out of 10 the answer to the first question is yes... the answer to the second may take a while. There's no one stop shop like the policy editor, which is definite disadvantage sometimes. On the other hand, very few even Enterprise level IT groups us all of the things you can do with GPE, and most of the common stuff is pretty easy in most Unixes.
This is no doubt true in some cases, but no the majority. I've have people contact me very upset over time sensitive work that they really wanted to get done because of issues like this. People here do not understand the extent to which many users have no idea why they do things. They simply follow routines and procedures. Often largely tied to visual clues that they themselves may be unaware they rely on.
Really? OK, I posted earlier about all the reasons that moving to *nix from Windows is hard, but, well, these are none of them. Every problem you list has at least one often more solutions in the Unix world:
File sharing: Several options. Assuming all Unix machines, NFS is by far the easiest. As long as all users are authenticating off the same directory their UIDs will match between systems. This is the "go to" Unix file sharing system, but there's other options. You can use Samba of course, and there's a few nifty distributed file systems out there that are starting to get mature. The first two options will work on any Unix system including Macs. The distributed solutions are spottier in what they support, being often new.
Centralized Login: Two major solutions. LDAP and NIS+. LDAP is by far the more modern and and scalable, though it can be slightly tricky to set up. Very slightly, nothing any half competent admin can't figure out. Original NIS is also an option, but is getting long in the tooth and has some security problems. Macs are perfectly capable of using LDAP, and I assume NIS as well, though I've never tried
Policy management: This is a little less defined in the Unix world than it is in Windows, but still manageable. Most of these policies are managed by various text files in Unix, so what I typically do is run a script when I first install them to set everything the way I want it. In the unlikely event I need to make a change I just change one system and propagate it to all the others. I have a script that copies a file where ever it needs to go on every machine in the network. You can also automate this through rsync though I've never personally bothered to set this up. I've never run a network complicated enough to really need it. The hard part here is if you have a heterogeneous Unix environment, since nearly all Unix's insist on using different files and different syntax to manage this stuff. I'll admit this is a slightly weak area, but definitely manageable.
Update Management: It's trivial to setup a local repository for any *nix repository system I am aware of. Setup you client to update to the local repository and test updates before you put them on the repo server.
Mostly this stuff is trivial in Unix/Mac environments. When I manage heterogeneous networks my problem is usually getting the Windows boxes to play nice with everyone else. Unix and Mac machines will all happily share files and directory data with each other, even across different OS's and hardware platforms, while the Windows boxes insist on playing their own little game. Samba helps with file sharing, but getting everyone to log in against the same network shared directory is an undertaking and a half.
I don't even know how you can ask that question. UI's aren't taught in college CS courses. UI design might be, but not UIs. Certainly not brand new just released "we moved everything around" UIs. He didn't say that he couldn't use the new system, just that it takes time and effort to learn where everything has been moved to and a certain amount of retraining muscle memory. Regardless I spent the majority of my master's in Computer Science in text editors. A few side trips to MS Office and Viso for Software Engineering design projects, and Mathematica for a signal processing class, but mostly a text editor.