How they are going to " hopefully to sell some good Sun iron in the process" I can't see, since what they are talking about open sourcing Solaris for x86. The Solaris version running on those good Sun irons are the Sparc version, and that's basically a whole different version of Solaris.
A virtual elmination of software piracy as a concern, and serious respect from the high-skill section of the current and potential userbase.
Not to mention an apple-like refocusing of their company.
Very well put. I believe that Sun has decided they must win the "hearts and minds" of key technology purchase influencers, or "geeks" as they are called here, if they want to succeed.
You make a good point about Apple. Apple did very well by using this strategy: Build sexy workstations and the geeks will come, bringing the rest of us with them.
No. They didn't explictly done this to prove anything.
[grammar nazi]How do you done something?[/grammar nazi]
This (building trust) is not Sun main goal - their goal is to go to open source develpement model as it can benefit them. Pure business...
Isn't this what I just said? They want to prove to the open source community that they are serious about open sourcing Solaris, so they can benefit from open source contributions. Perhaps they realized (a little too late, I might add), that it would be better to benefit from open source than to fight against it.
I was kind of under the impression that this move was masterminded by Microsoft (via the multi-billion dollar deal they had with Sun) as an attempt to fragment the Open Source community. I could be very wrong, but it seems to make the most sense that way. The real question is whether Sun's license is compatible with the GPL.
Microsoft doesn't have any control over Sun at all. You might have thought this because MS paid Sun $2 billion as part of a settlement agreement, but really, they did this because they had to and because Sun was willing to do them a favor and let them off easy. If Sun had wanted to keep fighting that fight forever, they could have, and probably would have ended up with more cash, although they might have gone out of business before any damages were won.
Believe me, folks at Sun dislike MS business tactics as much as you do.
From it, I shamelessly lifted the following brief synopsis:
Q. What is DTrace?
A. DTrace is a new facility in the Solaris Operating System that adds dynamic instrumentation and tracing to the kernel and can be used on production systems. It's a power tool that can be used by both the entry-level and experienced system administrators to diagnose and resolve problems in hours or minutes that might have previously taken days.
Q. What are the benefits of DTrace?
A.
Faster resolution of performance problems for system administrators
Quicker time to market and higher quality product for developers
Greater utilization of existing system resources for IT managers
Q. What are the key highlights of DTrace?
A.
Comprehensive coverage: over 30,000 instrumentation points in even the smallest system; integrated access to both application and kernel data
Always available: built-in with no need to reboot or otherwise reconfigure system, disable or alter applications, or disable user/client access
Safe: cannot panic system and has no impact on the system when not being used
Enable only the trace points you need
Analyzes data in real time on production systems
Extensible as new analysis routines can be built for re-use using the D programming language
Q. What is the performance overhead of DTrace?
A. When not in use, DTrace has no impact on system performance or other behavior. When being used, DTrace overhead is dependent on the number of probe points being observed.
Q. How does Sun's DTrace compare with competitive offerings?
A. DTrace is the only dynamic tracing tool available that eliminates the need for collecting and processing event data. With DTrace a system administrator can query the system experiencing the problem in real time, while in production, and get accurate and precise information regarding the source of the problem. No log files are generated, and there is no data to analyze. This reduces the time it takes to identify and resolve problems by orders of magnitude! Literally from days to minutes.
Containers are based on software. They offer logical separation with the same OS in each Container. Containers offer enormous scalabilty: while there is no hard coded limit, upto 4000 per OS image are available and is beyond normal requirements today.
Q. Can DTrace be used without knowing the D language?
A. You can leverage scripts developed by others (such as those available on the Sun BigAdmin portal). However, it is not difficult to learn D which is very similar to the ANSI C programming language with a special set of functions and variables to make tracing easy.
What a lot of Slashdotters might not realize is that Sun has spent literally millions of hours over the last couple of years "unencumbering" Solaris from patented code that was owned by other companies opposed to the open sourcing of their intellectual property. They did this for no reason other than to prove to the open source community that they are serious about open sourcing Solaris, and hopefully to sell some good Sun iron in the process.
It would be nice to see some Slashdotters give Sun their well deserved props for a change, instead of ripping on them.
"What? You gave us OpenOffice? That's not good enough..." I hoping this thread doesn't turn into another Sun bash fest because this time they deserve a little respect for giving away what I see as the crown jewels of their company.
I have a friend who works for Sun Microsystems, and he tells me they're working on a 3D version of JDS (don't get me wrong, a desktop system is the LAST thing I'd want to see Java used for, but that's not the point). Among other things, you can rotate a window, say, 80 degrees and stick it in a corner. It's then still recognizable, but it doesn't take up much space. You can also turn things around and write notes on the back. This is a REAL use of 3D in a graphical shell. Now, if only somebody would take their idea and implement it in C++ (or some other language with a goal other than portability).
You're talking about Project Looking Glass, which is still in alpha, but will eventually bring a true 3d interface to the Linux desktop. It truly looks like a revolutionary interface, and you can see a video demo of Satan himself (Jonathan Schwartz);-P demoing it here.
Some developers are already beginning to contribute to the project, which is open sourced. You can find more details and even download a developer preview of the release at this website.
I downloaded the developer preview and briefly got it up and running on my system. I'm running Suse 9.2, and it requires an ATI or Nvidia 3d card with DRI support enabled in your X config.
using a phone line on a bbs to call *another* bbs that was out of your long distance range. Cool oldschool stuff:)
Back in the good old days I remember dialing into the local university and using their outbound modem lines to dial BBSs all over the country on my friend's father's professor account. That was fun. I even ran a BBS for a while that participated in Fidonet, which was a lot of fun. I would dialup a node in Arizona where I picked up mail feeds from late at night while the long distance rates were cheap. Fidonet groups were very similar to Newsgroups, however mail took 2-3 days average to be delivered due to all of the intermediate hops. Coverage was international, and pretty reliable. Some of the higher volume groups could really up your long distance bill as well.
I have to say that an Xbox paired with XBOX Media Center works best as a Jukebox. Even better yet, you can set the dashboard to XBMC, and lock it down so that all they can do is listen to music or even watch Music Videos (or Divx). It supports almost all formats under the sun, except DRMd ones like iTMS AAC, but it even supports normally encrypted AAC. You can use a joystick as the controller, or the infrared remote.
Not only that, in newer versions you can even get weather forecasts, and listen to Internet radio. Xbox Media Center truly does rock. Keep all of your music/media on a central server and just mount it with SMB.
You wrote: Until Solaris 9 (and now, 10), Sun themselves didn't take Solaris on x86 seriously. Now that Sun want's to try to take Solaris on x86 seriously, they expect IBM to suddenly jump in on it?
From TFA: We've made sure your engineers know that moving from Solaris 8 or 9 to Solaris 10 takes no work, given that we offer true binary compatibility. If you're on SPARC, and you'd like to take advantage of a world of x86 systems, it's a simple recompile. There's no recoding at all. Same applies to scaling up from Intel or Opteron to SPARC. No recoding.
Well, that sounds all nice on paper, but it shows a remarkable naivete about the development process. There is always work involved in making an application work with a new version of Solaris. Sure, it's binary compatible, but even if there is no need to recompile, you still have to pay someone to QA the thing and make sure it doesn't break on the new OS. He acts as if development time is free.
I got an idea for you Jonathan: If you want IBM to port their apps to Solaris 10, first get a good percentage of their customers to use the platform, and you'll find that the apps will migrate on their own. IBM will port all of their major apps there if they see a market. Right now the marketshare of Solaris 10 is exactly 0%, because it isn't even out yet! (Despite what the banner ads rotating at the top of Slashdot would have you believe)
There is no way that this product is intended for anyone but the mp3 leecher. Sure, you could rip the ~825 CDs it would take to fill this thing (and spend countless hours doing so), but more than likely, you just cram it full of stuff you got from the internet.
Hardly. Many audiophiles use the iPod with Apple lossless codec, or even AIFF (before lossless was available). This gives you dramatically less space. Also, many iPod users like to carry files and data around on them as well.
Quit saying that just because you can buy a 200 GB hard drive, the only possible use for that is to fill it with warez and pirated movies and music. There are many non-infringing uses and the moment our government decides that any data storage device is going to be used for piracy is the moment the tech industry dies.
I understand the iPod plays what you reference but think about your statement. People will buy a crippled proprietary format from iTunes that requires either iTunes or an iPod to listen to it and whistle happily along. Go figure.
True, but the iPod also plays MP3 which is not DRM protected. The Sony does not.
Well, if you help me out I might be able to. The company that is offering this is Gratis Network, which is legit. They are also offering the free iPods and other things. I did my research on them and they are the real deal. You can get one too... Just click on my sig.
The emergence of MP3 players has been built on the availability of terrabytes of stolen material being circulated. Is it in Sony's best interest to implicitly support this movement through the introduction of MP3 devices that will undoubtably be used to play, and encourag further dissemination of, pirated Sony content? I don't think it's an easy question to answer, and I can understand Sony's hesitancy.
That may or may not be true. I'm sure in some ways the popularity of the iPod has to do with filesharing, but in a lot of other ways, it's just about how people like to enjoy their music. A lot of people I know have an iPod that have never stolen any music or used Kazaa. They just like being able to rip their CDs, chuck them in a storage closet somewhere, and carry their whole music library in the palm of their hand.
If Sony wants to join the market, they will admit their mistakes and uncripple their devices. The marketplace has spoken. Crippled, proprietary formats do not sell and the more they try to cram them down our throats, the more people will just buy an iPod that plays MP3 and AAC.
Easy fix, easyer than DLing and maintaining a differant client...
Delete files in c:\windows\system32\AdCache
Set all user permissions on folder c:\windows\system32\AdCache to deny (no access)
block/deny: *cydoor.com/* *cms.com/*
It doesn't complain if the ads are not comming in, it just throws them up:)
Although I appreciate the information, I'd just as soon not have the spyware installed on my computer in the first place. Unless you've sat there with a debugger and stepped through Cydoor one instruction at a time, how do you know it doesn't stick copies of itself somewhere else, or trojan another binary along the way? These spyware programs are notorious for nasty tricks like that.
Also, I remember reading in the previous article that uninstalling Cydoor causes Exeem to stop working, so you're still better off using the Lite client.
Please don't support spyware or authors that include spyware in their products. There are better ways to make money, and decent programmers can simply use Paypal or some other method of donationware to make a buck, while still delivering value (and most importantly goodwill) to their users.
My guess is the real reason why they're funding this using Adware is that the original Suprnova was mostly funded by banner ads, and they still need a revenue stream. Of course, now the editors are no longer screening content, so what they bring to the table (besides the application) is not as much.
It's possible Apple has the idea of using Airport Express to provide this kind of audio support. It's certainly capable of doing so, although Apple will have to expand which applications support AirTunes style streaming.
That could work, except for one problem: The Airport Express has about a 1 second delay on audio transmitted to it. I think it buffers it or something because I've tried to get music playing in two rooms at the same time and I could never get it synced up properly.
You wrote: I wouldn't be surprised if Homeland Security Operations Morning Briefs that we leaked are also part of their inclination to avoid digital record keeping (and comprehensive FOIA searches)
From the linked Cryptome article: 3. (FOUO) NEW YORK: Passenger Arrested for Artfully Concealed Prohibited Item. According to BTS reporting, on 30 November, at JFK International Airport, TSA screeners detected a "Leatherman" tool artfully concealed in a quart jar of hair gel in a passenger's carry-on bag during x-ray screening. LEOs arrested the named U.S. passenger on the state charge of criminal possession of a weapon in the 4th degree. (BTS Daily Operations Report, 1 Dec 04; HSOC 4583-04)
Wow, I'm sorry but you just know our government has gone too far when they are arresting people under felony charges for carrying a Leatherman!!! This is nuts... The guy was probably just thinking "oh shit, I don't want to lose my Leatherman at the security checkpoint because they'll make me throw away an expensive tool, so I'll hide it in here", and they throw him in federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison. How many lives have to be ruined before people will wake up and stop this nonsense.
Citizen... you have learned too much. Please report to your nearest church, synagogue, or other re-education center where you will be rectally probed by Pat Roberts and forced to sing patriotic songs. To try our new online re-education service, please remove all clothing or hats containing aluminum and hold your tongue to your cable or DSL line for approximately 30 seconds, or until our mind-control waves take effect...
Slashdot Mirror
The press releases say those patents are only for software under the CDDL license and the OpenSolaris process.
You wouldn't expect them to allow Linux to outright lift Solaris code and put it in their kernel, would you?
How they are going to " hopefully to sell some good Sun iron in the process" I can't see, since what they are talking about open sourcing Solaris for x86. The Solaris version running on those good Sun irons are the Sparc version, and that's basically a whole different version of Solaris.
Sun sells some really nice AMD64 servers now too.
A virtual elmination of software piracy as a concern, and serious respect from the high-skill section of the current and potential userbase.
Not to mention an apple-like refocusing of their company.
Very well put. I believe that Sun has decided they must win the "hearts and minds" of key technology purchase influencers, or "geeks" as they are called here, if they want to succeed.
You make a good point about Apple. Apple did very well by using this strategy: Build sexy workstations and the geeks will come, bringing the rest of us with them.
No. They didn't explictly done this to prove anything.
[grammar nazi]How do you done something?[/grammar nazi]
This (building trust) is not Sun main goal - their goal is to go to open source develpement model as it can benefit them. Pure business...
Isn't this what I just said? They want to prove to the open source community that they are serious about open sourcing Solaris, so they can benefit from open source contributions. Perhaps they realized (a little too late, I might add), that it would be better to benefit from open source than to fight against it.
So they're removing SCO code? ;-)
LMFAO... That's probably a good deal of it, but your comment was still funny.
I was kind of under the impression that this move was masterminded by Microsoft (via the multi-billion dollar deal they had with Sun) as an attempt to fragment the Open Source community. I could be very wrong, but it seems to make the most sense that way. The real question is whether Sun's license is compatible with the GPL.
Microsoft doesn't have any control over Sun at all. You might have thought this because MS paid Sun $2 billion as part of a settlement agreement, but really, they did this because they had to and because Sun was willing to do them a favor and let them off easy. If Sun had wanted to keep fighting that fight forever, they could have, and probably would have ended up with more cash, although they might have gone out of business before any damages were won.
Believe me, folks at Sun dislike MS business tactics as much as you do.
From it, I shamelessly lifted the following brief synopsis:
Q. What is DTrace?
Q. What are the benefits of DTrace?
Q. What are the key highlights of DTrace?
Q. What is the performance overhead of DTrace?
Q. How does Sun's DTrace compare with competitive offerings?
Q. Can DTrace be used without knowing the D language?
What a lot of Slashdotters might not realize is that Sun has spent literally millions of hours over the last couple of years "unencumbering" Solaris from patented code that was owned by other companies opposed to the open sourcing of their intellectual property. They did this for no reason other than to prove to the open source community that they are serious about open sourcing Solaris, and hopefully to sell some good Sun iron in the process.
It would be nice to see some Slashdotters give Sun their well deserved props for a change, instead of ripping on them.
"What? You gave us OpenOffice? That's not good enough..." I hoping this thread doesn't turn into another Sun bash fest because this time they deserve a little respect for giving away what I see as the crown jewels of their company.
I have a friend who works for Sun Microsystems, and he tells me they're working on a 3D version of JDS (don't get me wrong, a desktop system is the LAST thing I'd want to see Java used for, but that's not the point). Among other things, you can rotate a window, say, 80 degrees and stick it in a corner. It's then still recognizable, but it doesn't take up much space. You can also turn things around and write notes on the back. This is a REAL use of 3D in a graphical shell. Now, if only somebody would take their idea and implement it in C++ (or some other language with a goal other than portability).
;-P demoing it here.
You're talking about Project Looking Glass, which is still in alpha, but will eventually bring a true 3d interface to the Linux desktop. It truly looks like a revolutionary interface, and you can see a video demo of Satan himself (Jonathan Schwartz)
Some developers are already beginning to contribute to the project, which is open sourced. You can find more details and even download a developer preview of the release at this website.
I downloaded the developer preview and briefly got it up and running on my system. I'm running Suse 9.2, and it requires an ATI or Nvidia 3d card with DRI support enabled in your X config.
using a phone line on a bbs to call *another* bbs that was out of your long distance range. Cool oldschool stuff :)
Back in the good old days I remember dialing into the local university and using their outbound modem lines to dial BBSs all over the country on my friend's father's professor account. That was fun. I even ran a BBS for a while that participated in Fidonet, which was a lot of fun. I would dialup a node in Arizona where I picked up mail feeds from late at night while the long distance rates were cheap. Fidonet groups were very similar to Newsgroups, however mail took 2-3 days average to be delivered due to all of the intermediate hops. Coverage was international, and pretty reliable. Some of the higher volume groups could really up your long distance bill as well.
Linky says offer expired 31 Dec. 2004.
It is 2005 right?
My bad... I thought it was going on forever because they've been offering it for the price of shipping for the last couple of years or so.
You can also find USB to Xbox adapters on the net.
Microsoft will send you one for free if you pay for shipping and handling: linky.
I have to say that an Xbox paired with XBOX Media Center works best as a Jukebox. Even better yet, you can set the dashboard to XBMC, and lock it down so that all they can do is listen to music or even watch Music Videos (or Divx). It supports almost all formats under the sun, except DRMd ones like iTMS AAC, but it even supports normally encrypted AAC. You can use a joystick as the controller, or the infrared remote.
Not only that, in newer versions you can even get weather forecasts, and listen to Internet radio. Xbox Media Center truly does rock. Keep all of your music/media on a central server and just mount it with SMB.
You wrote: Until Solaris 9 (and now, 10), Sun themselves didn't take Solaris on x86 seriously. Now that Sun want's to try to take Solaris on x86 seriously, they expect IBM to suddenly jump in on it?
From TFA: We've made sure your engineers know that moving from Solaris 8 or 9 to Solaris 10 takes no work, given that we offer true binary compatibility. If you're on SPARC, and you'd like to take advantage of a world of x86 systems, it's a simple recompile. There's no recoding at all. Same applies to scaling up from Intel or Opteron to SPARC. No recoding.
Well, that sounds all nice on paper, but it shows a remarkable naivete about the development process. There is always work involved in making an application work with a new version of Solaris. Sure, it's binary compatible, but even if there is no need to recompile, you still have to pay someone to QA the thing and make sure it doesn't break on the new OS. He acts as if development time is free.
I got an idea for you Jonathan: If you want IBM to port their apps to Solaris 10, first get a good percentage of their customers to use the platform, and you'll find that the apps will migrate on their own. IBM will port all of their major apps there if they see a market. Right now the marketshare of Solaris 10 is exactly 0%, because it isn't even out yet! (Despite what the banner ads rotating at the top of Slashdot would have you believe)
There is no way that this product is intended for anyone but the mp3 leecher. Sure, you could rip the ~825 CDs it would take to fill this thing (and spend countless hours doing so), but more than likely, you just cram it full of stuff you got from the internet.
Hardly. Many audiophiles use the iPod with Apple lossless codec, or even AIFF (before lossless was available). This gives you dramatically less space. Also, many iPod users like to carry files and data around on them as well.
Quit saying that just because you can buy a 200 GB hard drive, the only possible use for that is to fill it with warez and pirated movies and music. There are many non-infringing uses and the moment our government decides that any data storage device is going to be used for piracy is the moment the tech industry dies.
And they are not harvesting email adresses for spam purposes? :P
They probably are. Just use a spamhole address like I did.
Also, you might want to read up on the company like I did before signing up.
I understand the iPod plays what you reference but think about your statement. People will buy a crippled proprietary format from iTunes that requires either iTunes or an iPod to listen to it and whistle happily along. Go figure.
True, but the iPod also plays MP3 which is not DRM protected. The Sony does not.
Well, if you help me out I might be able to. The company that is offering this is Gratis Network, which is legit. They are also offering the free iPods and other things. I did my research on them and they are the real deal. You can get one too... Just click on my sig.
Thanks! I'm looking forward to it.
The emergence of MP3 players has been built on the availability of terrabytes of stolen material being circulated. Is it in Sony's best interest to implicitly support this movement through the introduction of MP3 devices that will undoubtably be used to play, and encourag further dissemination of, pirated Sony content? I don't think it's an easy question to answer, and I can understand Sony's hesitancy.
That may or may not be true. I'm sure in some ways the popularity of the iPod has to do with filesharing, but in a lot of other ways, it's just about how people like to enjoy their music. A lot of people I know have an iPod that have never stolen any music or used Kazaa. They just like being able to rip their CDs, chuck them in a storage closet somewhere, and carry their whole music library in the palm of their hand.
If Sony wants to join the market, they will admit their mistakes and uncripple their devices. The marketplace has spoken. Crippled, proprietary formats do not sell and the more they try to cram them down our throats, the more people will just buy an iPod that plays MP3 and AAC.
Easy fix, easyer than DLing and maintaining a differant client...
:)
Delete files in c:\windows\system32\AdCache
Set all user permissions on folder c:\windows\system32\AdCache to deny (no access)
block/deny:
*cydoor.com/*
*cms.com/*
It doesn't complain if the ads are not comming in, it just throws them up
Although I appreciate the information, I'd just as soon not have the spyware installed on my computer in the first place. Unless you've sat there with a debugger and stepped through Cydoor one instruction at a time, how do you know it doesn't stick copies of itself somewhere else, or trojan another binary along the way? These spyware programs are notorious for nasty tricks like that.
Also, I remember reading in the previous article that uninstalling Cydoor causes Exeem to stop working, so you're still better off using the Lite client.
Please don't support spyware or authors that include spyware in their products. There are better ways to make money, and decent programmers can simply use Paypal or some other method of donationware to make a buck, while still delivering value (and most importantly goodwill) to their users.
My guess is the real reason why they're funding this using Adware is that the original Suprnova was mostly funded by banner ads, and they still need a revenue stream. Of course, now the editors are no longer screening content, so what they bring to the table (besides the application) is not as much.
It's possible Apple has the idea of using Airport Express to provide this kind of audio support. It's certainly capable of doing so, although Apple will have to expand which applications support AirTunes style streaming.
That could work, except for one problem: The Airport Express has about a 1 second delay on audio transmitted to it. I think it buffers it or something because I've tried to get music playing in two rooms at the same time and I could never get it synced up properly.
Fair 'nuff... I get kind of sick of the free iPod comment spam too, but I figure... free Unix desktop! That kind of changes things.
You wrote: I wouldn't be surprised if Homeland Security Operations Morning Briefs that we leaked are also part of their inclination to avoid digital record keeping (and comprehensive FOIA searches)
From the linked Cryptome article: 3. (FOUO) NEW YORK: Passenger Arrested for Artfully Concealed Prohibited Item. According to BTS reporting, on 30 November, at JFK International Airport, TSA screeners detected a "Leatherman" tool artfully concealed in a quart jar of hair gel in a passenger's carry-on bag during x-ray screening. LEOs arrested the named U.S. passenger on the state charge of criminal possession of a weapon in the 4th degree. (BTS Daily Operations Report, 1 Dec 04; HSOC 4583-04)
Wow, I'm sorry but you just know our government has gone too far when they are arresting people under felony charges for carrying a Leatherman!!! This is nuts... The guy was probably just thinking "oh shit, I don't want to lose my Leatherman at the security checkpoint because they'll make me throw away an expensive tool, so I'll hide it in here", and they throw him in federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison. How many lives have to be ruined before people will wake up and stop this nonsense.
The mysterious death of Kenneth Trentadue
Citizen... you have learned too much. Please report to your nearest church, synagogue, or other re-education center where you will be rectally probed by Pat Roberts and forced to sing patriotic songs. To try our new online re-education service, please remove all clothing or hats containing aluminum and hold your tongue to your cable or DSL line for approximately 30 seconds, or until our mind-control waves take effect...