This isn't about "good press" or "bad press". You can be an enthusiastic user of a product and still wish it were a better product. That's how products get better: by listening to dissatisfied users.
And it's perfectly true that Sun sometimes has control issues. I should know: I work there. And a lot of my confidence in current management comes from the fact that they know it too.
Speaking of simplistic labels: I notice this story has the tag "fudfudfud". Grow up people. Stop yelling "FUD!" every time somebody tells you something you don't want to hear. It's pretty rare to hear the word when it isn't a case of somebody wanting to ignore bad news or honest dissent by claiming it's malicious gossip. That's another reason for my confidence in Sun management: they've given up that particular vice.
Speaking as a Sun employee, and on behalf of many of my fellow employees: hear, hear! Sun has always had control issues. It's part of the corporate culture. People here criticize this every day, both constructively and otherwise. Why should the larger community be any different?
One suggestion: don't complain to other Slashdotters: not a lot they can do. And don't complain to me: I'm just a hardware tech writer. Take your complaints to the top.
Next time you feel the need to "support" a software publisher, just send them a check. Because buying extra copies mostly supports the retailer and wholesaler.
But forget all that. This isn't NPR, where they can run the whole thing on the generosity of the 10% of listeners who feel compelled to pay. This is a commercial operation, that can't survive without selling enough copies of the software to make back their development and support costs. This relies on there being lots of gamers with Linux boxes, not the sporadic generosity of individual gamers.
....but if I were looking at two laptops sitting side by side in a cafe and was planning on stealing one, I'd take the one without a name engraved on it.
If you were a thief, you would be very stupid to hang around carefully inspecting the item you're thinking of stealing. Good way to get busted. You'd just grab it and go. Or in the case of your particular thought experiment, you'd grab both of them and go.
A thief isn't even going to notice an engraving unless it's in 30 point type on the laptop cover. And even then, he'd probably grab it anyway. People who make their living that way tend not to be complicated thinkers.
You're an asshole. It may be wrong, but you have no way of knowing that it's FUD. Not everybody who's critical of Linux is part of the Great Microsoft Conspiracy.
Yeah, that's what I've been told. This was true even before tracking software was invented; personal information on the hard drive identifies the laptop as stolen.
However, it's possible to put the tracking app in firmware. Though that mainly makes sense for companies that have a lot of hardware getting "lost".
Actually, there is something to be said for reducing the value of the stolen good. If you make it more dangerous to resell and purchase stolen laptops through identification techniques (engravings, serial ID marked stolen in the laptop vendor's customer service database etc.), you reduce the incentive for stealing them in the first place.
Right, you're being held up at gun point, and you take the time to tell the guy, "You don't want my laptop, it's got my name etched into it." Or, if you have a shred of sanity, you hand over your stuff and say as little as possible. Avoiding eye contact is also advisable.
Of course, most laptop thefts don't involve armed robbery. Burglary, car breakins, sneaking into an office building. But these thieves just grab and go — they need to minimize their risk by minimizing their time at the crime scene. If it turns out that the item can't be fenced, they just discard it.
Which is not to say you should not put ID info on your stuff. There's always the dim chance it will be recovered during a bust, and you do want to make it easy for the cops to find you. But don't fool yourself that it makes you less vulnerable to theft.
the majority of software publishers and hardware vendors still don't get this "linux" thing and resist supporting it.
I think "resist" is the wrong word, and it doesn't matter whether they "get it" or not. If there were lots of Linux desktop users out there, software and hardware vendors would have to support them. But there aren't a lot of Linux desktop users, and one big reason is lack of support by software and hardware vendors. It's your basic marketplace Catch-22.
I'm really curious about what people seem to think is missing from the Linux kernel that impacts the desktop experience?
If you mean the typical desktop experience (web browsing, word processing, email, maybe a little low-end gaming), obviously nothing is missing. Modern processors are so overpowered in relation to basic home/office software that the kernel scheduler could be complete crap and nobody'd notice.
On the other hand, if you're running heavily multi-threaded software (high end games, multimedia, anything that does a lot of rendering) you probably want to squeeze every last cycle out of your CPU. A good scheduler helps a lot there. And "good scheduler" means different things on a server and a desktop.
Does Linux have a good desktop scheduler? I honestly have no idea. Many folks think it could be a lot better. But seriously analyzing software of this kind involves some serious Computer Science and non-linear math. I don't know how many Linux kernel critics have this kind of background, but many are obviously pragmatic programmers, not theoreticians.
I've been working with virtualization on the x86 platform since the first public release of VMWare. It's allowed me to use applications on my chosen platform (Linux) without needing to run Windows natively. But how many people people really need to do that kind of stuff? Geeks like you and me prefer Linux/Unix for some tasks because we like the toolset over there. But that doesn't mean there aren't Windows equivalents for these tools. There always are, and they meet the needs of the average non-geek user.
If you've used VMware from day one, you know they started out offering only desktop software. It's a tiny part of their business now. Guess why?
Another example is network block devices. There is no equivalent in the Windows world, but you can bet that Joe user would love it if there was. You have got to be kidding. Joe User doesn't go around doing complicated hacks with disk drives — especially network drives.
The big iron features of yesterday are commonplace on the home PCs of today. So why not skip ahead a little and actually make use of the big iron features? Because not all big iron features have a use on the client side. And even if they do, they don't migrate until it's cost effective. Unless, of course, the user is a geek and likes technology for its own sake.
If you want to fork the Linux Kernel, there's absolutely nothing from stopping you from doing it yourself.
And in further news, water flows downhill.
The question is not whether you can fork the kernel, the question is whether you should. On one side, you have hope that this would revive progress in desktop Linux. On the other, you have fear that this would create conflict and duplication of effort.
My answer? It just doesn't matter. Yes, desktop Linux is being neglected. But it's not because LT has developed a Big Iron fetish. It's because Open Source development, despite what people like to think, is subject to economic pressure.
OS evolved out of "Free Software", which is based on the quaint notion that software development is totally divorced from economics. Yeah yeah, I know about the beer/freedom dichotomy. It's BS. "Free" software has never been about anything but RMS throwing a tantrum over the fact that AT&T starting making people pay for Unix licenses. So he set out to write a "free" OS. Which, 20 years later, he still hasn't finished!
On the other hand, the anarchistic/fascist development model behind "Free" software (anybody can hack the source code, but the direction of a project is totally controlled by a small cadre not answerable to the other developers) turns out to be a pretty good way to develop non-proprietary software. Before, when a bunch of companies wanted to do this, they'd form a committee. After endless wrangling and compromise, the committee would produce a spec or standard that was usually feature-bloated, hard to implement, and basically satisfied no one. With the new model, somebody (like Linus Torvalds) with a vision for a new software product just sits down and starts coding. If the product turns out to be useful, people start contributing to it, and the product grows. Because LT chooses to listen to his contributers, but isn't compelled to accept their ideas, the product grows organically, responsive to user needs. Thus Open Source Software was invented.
But isn't that just the same as Free Software? No it's not. Because the OSS movement acknowledges that not all programmers can get by on grant money. Most Open Source code is written by programmers who are paid to do it. Who pays them? Companies that have a use the new feature or fix being coded, and find it in their own best interest to donate the new code to the OSS community.
That's why so much Linux kernel development is driven by the needs of Big Iron manufacturers (like the company I work for). They love Linux because it's a de-facto standard. And because it's not a real standard, it lacks the compromises and feature bloat of committee-driven software. It helps them sell hardware, and its in their interest to have their in-house programmers make improvements to it. But of course, those programmers are only going to make improvements that their employers actually need.
TFA cites Con Kolivas's retirement from kernel work as a sign that desktop Linux isn't healthy. But in fact the bad sign was that Con Kolivas was ever the leading hacker for desktop kernel features. Because nobody ever paid him for his work on the kernel. Indeed, he's not even a working programmer! He's a medical doctor who programs as a hobby.
That pretty much sums up the status of desktop Linux: it still belongs to hobbyists at a time when server-side Linux is an important commercial product. Unless and until you can change that, it doesn't matter who controls Linux kernel development: the needs of Big Iron will prevail.
This sounds like a big deal, until you get to the part where SCO only had 7 accountants! So 3 or 4 people quit or were fired. Not the most shocking event at any company, never mind one that's just declared bankruptcy.
Dude, if you're going to tell me I'm full of shit, don't base your entire argument one one offhand comment I made. Try reading my main argument. Or try reading the article you yourself linked to. Which doesn't say anything about how people are "wired". It just says that most people don't like to lose money. (Well, duh.) How does that explain why people continue to pay more and more money for cable?
And before you respond, think about what I've said long enough to prove that to prove that you're not hard wired to never admit that you got your facts wrong.
Maybe my problem is with the whole "darwin award" attitude. It's a way of asserting that you're way smarter than the person you're talking about, and would never do something so stupid. What's stupid is underestimating your own capacity for stupidity.
Harm you because their heart rate is raised? They could be overdosing on caffeine. Then they need health advice, stat!
They could be on meth. Then they need to be busted for using illegal drugs!
They might be some teenager on Ritalin or its relatives. If you're taking Ritalin and your heart is racing, you should probably try something else.
They might be masturbating. Then they need someone to help them find a sexual partner!
They might just have physiological tachycardia. Then they need an ambulance!
Face it, Big Brother knows best. That's why he's Big Brother! To quote the closing passage of 1984:
He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
We need as many quality "productivity suites"(ugh) as possible, as long as they support sensible formats.
You mean, as long as they all support the same format. Which they have to do so that people using different products can share files. These formats are, by their nature, messy, and without standardization you have no hope of going from WordBunny to WeaselWord to ZorkOffice without getting all your formats messed up. Fortunately, people are finally beginning to get this.
But forget "the more competition the better". The market's already saturated. Anybody who thinks they can add value at this late date is an idiot. And I've already wasted too much time with software designed by idiots.
Yeah, and MSOffice also includes an email client, which is one of the central apps in Zimbra. But Zimbra as I recall does not include word processing or spreadsheets, which are both basics of "office suites". Like I said, it's more specialized.
Speaking as a professional communication nazi, I have to say that it's our desire for precise communication that prevents us from ruling the world. First of all, being a power-mad fascist dictator requires you to be really good at ambiguity, so that everybody thinks you're on their side, and so that you don't have to take the blame for your own mistakes.
Besides, people find all those corrections to be really obnoxious. That's why we can never raise the army of rabid followers you really need for world domination.
This is not yet another competitor for Microsoft Office or Open Office. (God knows we don't need any more!) Zimbra is a little more specialized, concentrating on email, scheduling, and other "collaboration" stuff.
I seem to recall trying Zimbra a little while back and not being terribly impressed. Yahoo seems to have a history of buying companies for the sake of products or services they would have been better off developing themselves. Anybody remember broadcast.com?
Well, you're right to doubt the honesty and motives of the China's state media. But the fact is, people do die of game addiction. An ISP where I used to work used to host LAN parties. One guy showed up who'd already been awake for a couple days. I'm told he played for 36 hours straight. Then he got up, walked out into the parking lot and collapsed. Dead before anybody could help him.
It's lucky for me I suck at hand-eye coordination things. So no FPS marathons for me. Even so, I had to smash all my Civilization and Rise of Nations discs.
I notice a lot of people taged this story "darwinaward". Smug assholes. Like they never did anything stupid, compulsive, or self-destructive.
What has happened is that people who do not have full possession of the facts and have no legal expertise -- people whom from the very beginning we have been trying to help -- have made irresponsible charges and threatened lawsuits, thus slowing down our efforts to help them.
How do we know he's talking about Theo? That describes most of the people on Slashdot!
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't about "good press" or "bad press". You can be an enthusiastic user of a product and still wish it were a better product. That's how products get better: by listening to dissatisfied users.
And it's perfectly true that Sun sometimes has control issues. I should know: I work there. And a lot of my confidence in current management comes from the fact that they know it too.
Speaking of simplistic labels: I notice this story has the tag "fudfudfud". Grow up people. Stop yelling "FUD!" every time somebody tells you something you don't want to hear. It's pretty rare to hear the word when it isn't a case of somebody wanting to ignore bad news or honest dissent by claiming it's malicious gossip. That's another reason for my confidence in Sun management: they've given up that particular vice.
Speaking as a Sun employee, and on behalf of many of my fellow employees: hear, hear! Sun has always had control issues. It's part of the corporate culture. People here criticize this every day, both constructively and otherwise. Why should the larger community be any different?
One suggestion: don't complain to other Slashdotters: not a lot they can do. And don't complain to me: I'm just a hardware tech writer. Take your complaints to the top.
Next time you feel the need to "support" a software publisher, just send them a check. Because buying extra copies mostly supports the retailer and wholesaler.
But forget all that. This isn't NPR, where they can run the whole thing on the generosity of the 10% of listeners who feel compelled to pay. This is a commercial operation, that can't survive without selling enough copies of the software to make back their development and support costs. This relies on there being lots of gamers with Linux boxes, not the sporadic generosity of individual gamers.
CompuTrace has no connection with the Lo-Jack car recovery system, except for having purchased the right to use the brand.
So something is a "lie" just because you "know" it's not true? Didn't get a good grade in Critical Thinking, did we?
A thief isn't even going to notice an engraving unless it's in 30 point type on the laptop cover. And even then, he'd probably grab it anyway. People who make their living that way tend not to be complicated thinkers.
Yeah, that's what I've been told. This was true even before tracking software was invented; personal information on the hard drive identifies the laptop as stolen.
However, it's possible to put the tracking app in firmware. Though that mainly makes sense for companies that have a lot of hardware getting "lost".
Of course, most laptop thefts don't involve armed robbery. Burglary, car breakins, sneaking into an office building. But these thieves just grab and go — they need to minimize their risk by minimizing their time at the crime scene. If it turns out that the item can't be fenced, they just discard it.
Which is not to say you should not put ID info on your stuff. There's always the dim chance it will be recovered during a bust, and you do want to make it easy for the cops to find you. But don't fool yourself that it makes you less vulnerable to theft.
On the other hand, if you're running heavily multi-threaded software (high end games, multimedia, anything that does a lot of rendering) you probably want to squeeze every last cycle out of your CPU. A good scheduler helps a lot there. And "good scheduler" means different things on a server and a desktop.
Does Linux have a good desktop scheduler? I honestly have no idea. Many folks think it could be a lot better. But seriously analyzing software of this kind involves some serious Computer Science and non-linear math. I don't know how many Linux kernel critics have this kind of background, but many are obviously pragmatic programmers, not theoreticians. I've been working with virtualization on the x86 platform since the first public release of VMWare. It's allowed me to use applications on my chosen platform (Linux) without needing to run Windows natively. But how many people people really need to do that kind of stuff? Geeks like you and me prefer Linux/Unix for some tasks because we like the toolset over there. But that doesn't mean there aren't Windows equivalents for these tools. There always are, and they meet the needs of the average non-geek user.
If you've used VMware from day one, you know they started out offering only desktop software. It's a tiny part of their business now. Guess why? Another example is network block devices. There is no equivalent in the Windows world, but you can bet that Joe user would love it if there was. You have got to be kidding. Joe User doesn't go around doing complicated hacks with disk drives — especially network drives. The big iron features of yesterday are commonplace on the home PCs of today. So why not skip ahead a little and actually make use of the big iron features? Because not all big iron features have a use on the client side. And even if they do, they don't migrate until it's cost effective. Unless, of course, the user is a geek and likes technology for its own sake.
You did read my post all the way through, didn't you? No, I guess you didn't.
The question is not whether you can fork the kernel, the question is whether you should. On one side, you have hope that this would revive progress in desktop Linux. On the other, you have fear that this would create conflict and duplication of effort.
My answer? It just doesn't matter. Yes, desktop Linux is being neglected. But it's not because LT has developed a Big Iron fetish. It's because Open Source development, despite what people like to think, is subject to economic pressure.
OS evolved out of "Free Software", which is based on the quaint notion that software development is totally divorced from economics. Yeah yeah, I know about the beer/freedom dichotomy. It's BS. "Free" software has never been about anything but RMS throwing a tantrum over the fact that AT&T starting making people pay for Unix licenses. So he set out to write a "free" OS. Which, 20 years later, he still hasn't finished!
On the other hand, the anarchistic/fascist development model behind "Free" software (anybody can hack the source code, but the direction of a project is totally controlled by a small cadre not answerable to the other developers) turns out to be a pretty good way to develop non-proprietary software. Before, when a bunch of companies wanted to do this, they'd form a committee. After endless wrangling and compromise, the committee would produce a spec or standard that was usually feature-bloated, hard to implement, and basically satisfied no one. With the new model, somebody (like Linus Torvalds) with a vision for a new software product just sits down and starts coding. If the product turns out to be useful, people start contributing to it, and the product grows. Because LT chooses to listen to his contributers, but isn't compelled to accept their ideas, the product grows organically, responsive to user needs. Thus Open Source Software was invented.
But isn't that just the same as Free Software? No it's not. Because the OSS movement acknowledges that not all programmers can get by on grant money. Most Open Source code is written by programmers who are paid to do it. Who pays them? Companies that have a use the new feature or fix being coded, and find it in their own best interest to donate the new code to the OSS community.
That's why so much Linux kernel development is driven by the needs of Big Iron manufacturers (like the company I work for). They love Linux because it's a de-facto standard. And because it's not a real standard, it lacks the compromises and feature bloat of committee-driven software. It helps them sell hardware, and its in their interest to have their in-house programmers make improvements to it. But of course, those programmers are only going to make improvements that their employers actually need.
TFA cites Con Kolivas's retirement from kernel work as a sign that desktop Linux isn't healthy. But in fact the bad sign was that Con Kolivas was ever the leading hacker for desktop kernel features. Because nobody ever paid him for his work on the kernel. Indeed, he's not even a working programmer! He's a medical doctor who programs as a hobby.
That pretty much sums up the status of desktop Linux: it still belongs to hobbyists at a time when server-side Linux is an important commercial product. Unless and until you can change that, it doesn't matter who controls Linux kernel development: the needs of Big Iron will prevail.
This sounds like a big deal, until you get to the part where SCO only had 7 accountants! So 3 or 4 people quit or were fired. Not the most shocking event at any company, never mind one that's just declared bankruptcy.
Dude, if you're going to tell me I'm full of shit, don't base your entire argument one one offhand comment I made. Try reading my main argument. Or try reading the article you yourself linked to. Which doesn't say anything about how people are "wired". It just says that most people don't like to lose money. (Well, duh.) How does that explain why people continue to pay more and more money for cable?
And before you respond, think about what I've said long enough to prove that to prove that you're not hard wired to never admit that you got your facts wrong.
Maybe my problem is with the whole "darwin award" attitude. It's a way of asserting that you're way smarter than the person you're talking about, and would never do something so stupid. What's stupid is underestimating your own capacity for stupidity.
Face it, Big Brother knows best. That's why he's Big Brother! To quote the closing passage of 1984: He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.
But forget "the more competition the better". The market's already saturated. Anybody who thinks they can add value at this late date is an idiot. And I've already wasted too much time with software designed by idiots.
Yeah, and MSOffice also includes an email client, which is one of the central apps in Zimbra. But Zimbra as I recall does not include word processing or spreadsheets, which are both basics of "office suites". Like I said, it's more specialized.
Speaking as a professional communication nazi, I have to say that it's our desire for precise communication that prevents us from ruling the world. First of all, being a power-mad fascist dictator requires you to be really good at ambiguity, so that everybody thinks you're on their side, and so that you don't have to take the blame for your own mistakes.
Besides, people find all those corrections to be really obnoxious. That's why we can never raise the army of rabid followers you really need for world domination.
This is not yet another competitor for Microsoft Office or Open Office. (God knows we don't need any more!) Zimbra is a little more specialized, concentrating on email, scheduling, and other "collaboration" stuff.
I seem to recall trying Zimbra a little while back and not being terribly impressed. Yahoo seems to have a history of buying companies for the sake of products or services they would have been better off developing themselves. Anybody remember broadcast.com?
Well, you're right to doubt the honesty and motives of the China's state media. But the fact is, people do die of game addiction. An ISP where I used to work used to host LAN parties. One guy showed up who'd already been awake for a couple days. I'm told he played for 36 hours straight. Then he got up, walked out into the parking lot and collapsed. Dead before anybody could help him.
It's lucky for me I suck at hand-eye coordination things. So no FPS marathons for me. Even so, I had to smash all my Civilization and Rise of Nations discs.
I notice a lot of people taged this story "darwinaward". Smug assholes. Like they never did anything stupid, compulsive, or self-destructive.
Shut up, you Nazi.