Apparently if it isn't *X it doesn't exist...
on
Ian Murdock Answers
·
· Score: 2
"Linux NOW makes a network of workstations look like a single integrated system." "When it comes to dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of machines, however, these issues become much more difficult, and even after twenty years of using networks, people still don't have good ways of approaching them."
An interesting statement, given that Digital Equipment Corporation first provided that capability on VAXclusters under VMS in 1983, and the current development of that inital product is available from Compaq under both OpenVMS VAX and Alpha systems as well as forming the basis for TruCluster for Tru64 UNIX, including a distributed Cluster File System.
Not that it's isn't a good thing for Linux to have these capabilities, or for them to be Open Source; but maintaining that nothing like NOW exists currently just isn't the case.
Some of the most outraged comments in this discussion are the equivalent of no one will invent without IP. They forget that for a long time there WAS no IP, and people still invented, and wrote, and painted.
This premise ignores two inconvienient facts:
The establishment of IP laws rose with the advances in technology that made it progressively easier to duplicate the original works. The primary way to protect invention before patents was to keep one's methods secret, but in these days of reverse-engineering the trade secret is far less viable than it was, say, prior to the Industrial Revolution.
The primary way that creative workers such as composers and artists lived before IP law was to attract the attention of a rich patron. Having largely disposed of hereditary nobility (this year's U.S. Presidential election notwithstanding), the modern-day equivalent would be the wealthy businessmen and the heads of powerful NGOs. While I'm sure it would tickle Bill Gates no end to be in such a position, I doubt that this is a good thing.
It's one thing to realize that IP law has become flagrantly abused. It's another thing entirely to claim that this means that there is no use for it.
Ok, where's the troll that's going to say "Hey, if *you're* so concerned, why are you posting on Slashdot instead of helping the poor and saving the whales?"?
Posting on Slashdot doesn't save the whales? Next you'll tell me there's no magical penguin that goes around installing Linux of good children's computers...
Still, the abandonware beachhead isn't a great moral victory for OS. It's kind of like fighting World War 2 by waiting for the Nazis to get fed up with the snootiness of the French and decide they didn't want the country anyway.
I think you're doing these people an injustice. It looks like a lot of people believed in this product; and even though they just couldn't make a traditional company based on it work, they wanted better for their efforts than to see them vanish into obscurity.
It's more like the small farmer turning his money-losing farm into a self-supporting commune instead of looking for a big agribusiness conglomerate to buy him out. That is a victory for Open Source, at least as I see it.
We must make sure that Caldera does not get credit for anything! (Give me a break...)
And, just as a small aside, when I needed to install Linux on some old 486 boxes to run DNS and NAT, Red Hat and Mandrake curled up and died (Signal 9) right off the bat, but Cladera installed and ran without a whimper.
Emo actually was some guy that lived near weird Al, IIRC. I don't know that he ever really tried to make it as a comedian on his own. Too bad, in a way.
Oh, he most certainly did. Used to be on the TV stand-up comedy shows a lot back in the early 90s, before stand-up shows went back out of style.
I live in NYC, i ride the train to and from work every day, it's fast, cheap, and efficient, a marvel of engineering.
Mass transit gets tax subsidies, gasoline gets taxed; if mass transit had to pay for itself, it wouldn't be nearly so cheap anymore. The economy of scale that allows mass transit to work efficiently is actually very rare; it takes the density of a NYC or San Francisco (or Tokoyo, or London) to even come close.
Thanks for replying, especially considering that I got the usual "Flamebait" moderation for pointing out the sometimes sad history of UNIX advocacy.
For years the Macintosh was a much more sophisticated machine than the IBM PC, and yet DOS reigned supreme because of one simple fact. Macintoshes were more expensive than commodity PCs running DOS, and DOS was essentially "good enough."
You may be right, but I suspect you are underestimating the effect of marketing forces. There were two powerful forces behind the PC; the fact that it was relatively inexpensive, and the fact that the corporate power of IBM was backing it. These forces are opposed in the case of Linux (with the corporate power now being Microsoft's, of course), instead of aligned, and it will at the minimum cause the rise of Linux acceptance to be noticably slowed (although IBM still has considerable clout in that area. Were IBM to start pushing a pre-loaded corporate Linux desktop, that prediction could well take on the air of "Dewey Defeats Truman":)
Man, the world must really be coming to an end. I never thought I'd see the day that *Orrin Hatch* was on the side of good! Confusing though, he helped build and pass DMCA, one of the worst offenders in copyright use and abuse, but now champions the fair use clause?
If you actually look at the DMCA it's not nearly as bad as the lawsuits citing it have made it out to be (backed up by some seriously bizarre judicial rulings). For example, DeCSS is clearly meant to fall under the priviso allowing for reverse-engineering for purposes of interoperability, despite what the RIAA would have you believe.
Moderate this up! (was:Let's ban 'em)
on
Gas-Powered Shoes?
·
· Score: 1
Alliance Formed to Help Short Films Skirt Academy Ruling
Internet film portal and directory IFILM partners with AMC Theaters to create a theatrical showcase for selected shorts.
By LORENZA MUÑOZ, Times Staff Writer
Responding to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' recent ruling banning any film from being nominated for an Oscar if it debuts on the Internet, IFILM and AMC Theaters have formed a partnership to create a theatrical showcase for selected shorts.
For a film to be considered for a nomination, the Academy requires a three-day theatrical run, either in festivals or in movie houses. Reacting to the growing number of Internet film sites--particularly for short films--on June 13 the Academy voted to disqualify any film shown on the Web before a theatrical release.
So IFILM, a major film industry Web site, and AMC coordinated their efforts to make sure filmmakers could satisfy the Academy's requirements and still benefit from the massive exposure they receive from Internet broadcasting.
Their showcase, called ifilm@amcseries, will begin next month. It will include up to 10 short films, ranging from five to 15 minutes each. IFILM's programming selection team will choose the best films for the showcase. AMC will review the films and then decide where they will be shown (the locations for the theatrical releases have not been determined).
"Most filmmakers who create a short film hope to create a long film one day," said Kevin Wendle, co-founder and CEO of IFILM. "They want exposure, but they also want to win an Oscar. With AMC's involvement, they can reach the theatrical audience and the mass consumer market on the Internet and the business professionals who look to our site."
The partnership is a significant one, being that short films rarely get exposure in theaters even after they win an Academy Award.
Launched in October 1998, IFILM is a leading directory for the emerging world of Internet film. The IFILM Portal and Directory is the first comprehensive film portal and directory containing links to more than 4,000 Internet films from every major broadband content provider.
The Academy's decision sent a chill through the Internet world of filmmaking. Thousands of filmmakers, who had previously shown their goods on the Web, suddenly found themselves disqualified from entering the Oscar run. Many filmmakers have asked the Academy to consider a grandfather clause, which would allow films to be considered if they were posted on the Web before the ruling was handed down.
The Academy says that the ruling reflects its adherence to standards banning films from Oscar consideration if they have a television or video release before a theatrical run.
"We are the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. . . . We have to pick out an area and stick to it," Academy spokesman John Pavlik said. "We are involved in the theatrical film business."
Linux could still be a lot easier to use, especially if it want to be on normal desktops. Microsoft, whatever its failings, has implemented a lot of good interface ideas in Windows. Using them will make it easier for users to switch away from Windows. (You know, embrace, extend...)
If a commercial venture like Corel can get Linux onto lots of desktops then it's a win for the open source movement. It may have to hijack KDE to do so, but would it really be a loss? Isn't the real goal of the KDE project to "dumb down" Linux anyway?
Exactly! The goal of KDE is to put a Windows-style desktop on Linux, just as the goal of Eazel/GNOME is to put a Mac-style desktop on Linux. Both will help Linux gain more desktop users, and their existence will not prevent the current Penguinheads from using either a text console or their current favorite IncrediblyBloatedXWindowsManager, so I wholeheartedly support both efforts (by buying the retail versions, since I'm not a coder).
It's absurd to say that if MS hadn't become a company nobody would be using a computer.
But it is fair to say that if Microsoft had not taken advantage of IBM's not locking down the PC hardware that desktop computing would have advanced far more slowly than it did. IBM's leverage in the corporate world (driving application development) combined with cheap clone hardware (for small business and home use) resulted in desktop computer advancement being compressed into far less time than previous desktop machines like the Apple ][ or HP's 9800 series (or IBM's own 5100) had managed.
Without that, Linux wouldn't even exist, because Linus wouldn't have had the machine to develop it on.
This is much more sensible than the 3-company option (having IE be its own company).
It wasn't just IE; the proposed third company would have included all of Microsoft's internet-related businesses: MSN, Hotmail, MSNBC, etc., which is a lot of business!
Re:This has been going on for a long time...
on
The Leased Life?
·
· Score: 1
A crow was sitting on a fence post, doing nothing. Noticed by a passing rabbit, the rabbit inquired of the crow, "That looks comfortable. Mind if I sit and do nothing as well?" The crow accepted, and the rabbit sat at the base of the post. Just as the rabbit settled, a fox jumped out of the bush and gobbled him down before he knew what hit him. Moral of the story: You must be very high up before you can sit and do nothing.
The crow shook his head and chuckled at the fate of the silly rabbit, when suddenly, he was nailed by a soaring eagle, and his carcass was taken home to feed the nestlings. And the moral of this story: These days, nobody's that high up.
It's rather nice to see that Jon Katz isn't falling on deaf ears. I like that take on it; for some reason I think "Neo-feudalism" may strike a responsive chord in people to whom "Corporatisim" provokes no reaction at all...
The Crusoe *systems software*, by what it does, is probably the most innovative thing out there right now.
FX!32 (em86 in the Alpha Linux world) does the same thing, in the same way, except for the fact that it doesn't have the advantage of getting to run on hardware designed for the specific purpose of imitating other processors.
Exactly which government is paying the housing subsidy, the feds or the state? If its the feds then as a non-californian US taxpayer I'm outraged to be subsidizing stupid Californian socio-political choices.
Actually, as you can see by this link, California gets 7% less in federal money than it pays in federal taxes, so your outrage is misdirected.
Slashdot Mirror
"When it comes to dozens, or hundreds, or thousands of machines, however, these issues become much more difficult, and even after twenty years of using networks, people still don't have good ways of approaching them."
An interesting statement, given that Digital Equipment Corporation first provided that capability on VAXclusters under VMS in 1983, and the current development of that inital product is available from Compaq under both OpenVMS VAX and Alpha systems as well as forming the basis for TruCluster for Tru64 UNIX, including a distributed Cluster File System.
Not that it's isn't a good thing for Linux to have these capabilities, or for them to be Open Source; but maintaining that nothing like NOW exists currently just isn't the case.
This premise ignores two inconvienient facts:
- The establishment of IP laws rose with the advances in technology that made it progressively easier to duplicate the original works. The primary way to protect invention before patents was to keep one's methods secret, but in these days of reverse-engineering the trade secret is far less viable than it was, say, prior to the Industrial Revolution.
- The primary way that creative workers such as composers and artists lived before IP law was to attract the attention of a rich patron. Having largely disposed of hereditary nobility (this year's U.S. Presidential election notwithstanding), the modern-day equivalent would be the wealthy businessmen and the heads of powerful NGOs. While I'm sure it would tickle Bill Gates no end to be in such a position, I doubt that this is a good thing.
It's one thing to realize that IP law has become flagrantly abused. It's another thing entirely to claim that this means that there is no use for it.Ok, where's the troll that's going to say "Hey, if *you're* so concerned, why are you posting on Slashdot instead of helping the poor and saving the whales?"?
Posting on Slashdot doesn't save the whales? Next you'll tell me there's no magical penguin that goes around installing Linux of good children's computers...
From Netscape Navigator's option to "Accept only cookies that get sent back to the originating server"?
I think you're doing these people an injustice. It looks like a lot of people believed in this product; and even though they just couldn't make a traditional company based on it work, they wanted better for their efforts than to see them vanish into obscurity.
It's more like the small farmer turning his money-losing farm into a self-supporting commune instead of looking for a big agribusiness conglomerate to buy him out. That is a victory for Open Source, at least as I see it.
And, just as a small aside, when I needed to install Linux on some old 486 boxes to run DNS and NAT, Red Hat and Mandrake curled up and died (Signal 9) right off the bat, but Cladera installed and ran without a whimper.
You mean, is Tux Little-endian or Big-endian?
Oh, he most certainly did. Used to be on the TV stand-up comedy shows a lot back in the early 90s, before stand-up shows went back out of style.
Mass transit gets tax subsidies, gasoline gets taxed; if mass transit had to pay for itself, it wouldn't be nearly so cheap anymore. The economy of scale that allows mass transit to work efficiently is actually very rare; it takes the density of a NYC or San Francisco (or Tokoyo, or London) to even come close.
I thought that meant that they had to turn in a copy of Windows to get in :-}
For years the Macintosh was a much more sophisticated machine than the IBM PC, and yet DOS reigned supreme because of one simple fact. Macintoshes were more expensive than commodity PCs running DOS, and DOS was essentially "good enough."
You may be right, but I suspect you are underestimating the effect of marketing forces. There were two powerful forces behind the PC; the fact that it was relatively inexpensive, and the fact that the corporate power of IBM was backing it. These forces are opposed in the case of Linux (with the corporate power now being Microsoft's, of course), instead of aligned, and it will at the minimum cause the rise of Linux acceptance to be noticably slowed (although IBM still has considerable clout in that area. Were IBM to start pushing a pre-loaded corporate Linux desktop, that prediction could well take on the air of "Dewey Defeats Truman" :)
(btw- buy one of my CDs for $5.99? Please? :)
Sorry, I'm not buying one of your CD's until Edie does the vocals.
(Boy, is *that* an inside joke)
If you actually look at the DMCA it's not nearly as bad as the lawsuits citing it have made it out to be (backed up by some seriously bizarre judicial rulings). For example, DeCSS is clearly meant to fall under the priviso allowing for reverse-engineering for purposes of interoperability, despite what the RIAA would have you believe.
It's funny!
You could check out the FreeVMS project. I'm sure they'd appreciate any support you could provide!
It would be a greater service to mankind to eliminate the gene that makes men care about penis size.
Alliance Formed to Help Short Films Skirt Academy Ruling
Internet film portal and directory IFILM partners with AMC Theaters to create a theatrical showcase for selected shorts.
By LORENZA MUÑOZ, Times Staff Writer
Responding to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' recent ruling banning any film from being nominated for an Oscar if it debuts on the Internet, IFILM and AMC Theaters have formed a partnership to create a theatrical showcase for selected shorts.
For a film to be considered for a nomination, the Academy requires a three-day theatrical run, either in festivals or in movie houses. Reacting to the growing number of Internet film sites--particularly for short films--on June 13 the Academy voted to disqualify any film shown on the Web before a theatrical release.
So IFILM, a major film industry Web site, and AMC coordinated their efforts to make sure filmmakers could satisfy the Academy's requirements and still benefit from the massive exposure they receive from Internet broadcasting.
Their showcase, called ifilm@amcseries, will begin next month. It will include up to 10 short films, ranging from five to 15 minutes each. IFILM's programming selection team will choose the best films for the showcase. AMC will review the films and then decide where they will be shown (the locations for the theatrical releases have not been determined).
"Most filmmakers who create a short film hope to create a long film one day," said Kevin Wendle, co-founder and CEO of IFILM. "They want exposure, but they also want to win an Oscar. With AMC's involvement, they can reach the theatrical audience and the mass consumer market on the Internet and the business professionals who look to our site."
The partnership is a significant one, being that short films rarely get exposure in theaters even after they win an Academy Award.
Launched in October 1998, IFILM is a leading directory for the emerging world of Internet film. The IFILM Portal and Directory is the first comprehensive film portal and directory containing links to more than 4,000 Internet films from every major broadband content provider.
The Academy's decision sent a chill through the Internet world of filmmaking. Thousands of filmmakers, who had previously shown their goods on the Web, suddenly found themselves disqualified from entering the Oscar run. Many filmmakers have asked the Academy to consider a grandfather clause, which would allow films to be considered if they were posted on the Web before the ruling was handed down.
The Academy says that the ruling reflects its adherence to standards banning films from Oscar consideration if they have a television or video release before a theatrical run.
"We are the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. . . . We have to pick out an area and stick to it," Academy spokesman John Pavlik said. "We are involved in the theatrical film business."
Copyright 2000 Los Angeles Times
If a commercial venture like Corel can get Linux onto lots of desktops then it's a win for the open source movement. It may have to hijack KDE to do so, but would it really be a loss? Isn't the real goal of the KDE project to "dumb down" Linux anyway?
Exactly! The goal of KDE is to put a Windows-style desktop on Linux, just as the goal of Eazel/GNOME is to put a Mac-style desktop on Linux. Both will help Linux gain more desktop users, and their existence will not prevent the current Penguinheads from using either a text console or their current favorite IncrediblyBloatedXWindowsManager, so I wholeheartedly support both efforts (by buying the retail versions, since I'm not a coder).
But it is fair to say that if Microsoft had not taken advantage of IBM's not locking down the PC hardware that desktop computing would have advanced far more slowly than it did. IBM's leverage in the corporate world (driving application development) combined with cheap clone hardware (for small business and home use) resulted in desktop computer advancement being compressed into far less time than previous desktop machines like the Apple ][ or HP's 9800 series (or IBM's own 5100) had managed.
Without that, Linux wouldn't even exist, because Linus wouldn't have had the machine to develop it on.
It wasn't just IE; the proposed third company would have included all of Microsoft's internet-related businesses: MSN, Hotmail, MSNBC, etc., which is a lot of business!
Noticed by a passing rabbit, the rabbit inquired of the crow,
"That looks comfortable. Mind if I sit and do nothing as well?"
The crow accepted, and the rabbit sat at the base of the post.
Just as the rabbit settled, a fox jumped out of the bush
and gobbled him down before he knew what hit him.
Moral of the story: You must be very high up before you can sit and do nothing.
The crow shook his head and chuckled at the fate of the silly rabbit,
when suddenly, he was nailed by a soaring eagle,
and his carcass was taken home to feed the nestlings.
And the moral of this story: These days, nobody's that high up.
I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night, alive as you or me,
"But Joe!" said I, "You're long time gone!"
"I've been on-line." said he...
It's rather nice to see that Jon Katz isn't falling on deaf ears. I like that take on it; for some reason I think "Neo-feudalism" may strike a responsive chord in people to whom "Corporatisim" provokes no reaction at all...
FX!32 (em86 in the Alpha Linux world) does the same thing, in the same way, except for the fact that it doesn't have the advantage of getting to run on hardware designed for the specific purpose of imitating other processors.
Actually, as you can see by this link, California gets 7% less in federal money than it pays in federal taxes, so your outrage is misdirected.