Re:Can development work without centralization?
on
SourceForge Drifting
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· Score: 2
I think the trick is to have a lot of "supernodes", sites with relatively high bandwidth and relatively static connections. Maybe you'd even need some kind of meta-super-nodes, with completely static connections (but not necessarily too high of bandwidth), to point you to those supernodes.
Sounds very similar to what LimeWire did to get around the inherent inadequacies of the Gnutella protocol. So perhaps pure distributed isn't effective, but a greater level of distribution could work.
Also the Super Node concept makes sense at the developer level as well. So Linus becomes a Super Node for Linux. Something in the system could keep track of key contributors to projects and note that they would be a good source for code updates, etc. While they may not be networked adequately themselves they could have pointers to where their ideal version of the code is being kept. Essentially create the notion of an authoritative source for certain code bases.
btw, I sent an "ask slashdot" on this so will be interesting to see if they post it:)
Can development work without centralization?
on
SourceForge Drifting
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· Score: 3, Interesting
That's a very interesting idea. I'm just wondering how well development efforts can work without keeping the project somewhat centralized. Imagine for a moment a world where the Linux kernel doesn't have Linux and thousands of people are all releasing their own little patches to the code in a thousand different places. Seems like total chaos.
I do a lot of development using tools like CVS and even with a small team you can occasionally have problems with people forgetting to check in and causing conflicts. A massive web of people all working on their own tangents would turn that into utter chaos.
Seems like maybe the secret is some sort of very robust diff and dependancy tracking tool. If each patch could keep track of what patches it is dependant on, then when trying to apply a patch, it could inform you of dependancies it has an automatically get those patches. Of course I don't think this scales too well. If each patch has to keep track of patches it is dependent on then over time the patch files turn into huge lists of dependancies followed by a snippet of code.
I like the concept but I don't know if it's feasible...
If people out there take serious issue with Source Forge's turn to the proprietary, then take the last release of open source code and start your own Source Forge. I mean isn't that supposed to be one of the magical things about open source, that folks who want to go proprietary cannot because the community will hijack it.
Of course if you want to set up your own Source fFrge you have to have the money to run all of the servers, bandwidth, etc. Don't have the cash? Well I guess that's what Source Forge was running into as well.
Personally I think that Source Forge being open source itself was cool but rather secondary to the fact that source forge provides a great place for people to collaborate on projects. If they have to close the source to make it financially feasible to continue to provide the service, so be it. Which would be worse for the community: Source Forge running on proprietary software or Source Forge shutting down?
Unless the FSF is going to fund an open alternative to Source Forge they should get off their high horse.
If the lawyer is suspected to be relaying instructions, then it would actually be of benefit to NOT eavesdrop. Why? Because then the FBI can tail the attorney (based on a court order) and hopefully reveal the entire network. The big advantage to this is that you end up more readily finding out who the rest of the network is AND you can still prosecute.
So at least they are having the decency to call this out into the open rather than doing it secretly. I think what they are wanting to do here isn't entirely wrong but the way they are going about it is really bad. If this had strict judicial or congressional oversight I could probably be convinced that this is okay, but that they are just saying "trust us" seems risky.
When the DOJ brought this idea up it reminded me of the scandal that unfolded in LA over wiretaps. The LA police were taking wiretaps on a specific individual and then using information about other individuals, outside the scope of the warrant, to launch other investigations. The way they did this was by passing "anonymous tips" internally.
If a judge or congress was privy to all of the information that was being collected, then they would have the capability to smell out foul play by the DOJ. What i'm imagining is that somebody at the DOJ refers to an anonymous tip, so then the judge searches through a little database for that information and finds out it was in a transcript from a conversation that was supposed to be subject to attorney-client privilege.
I guess my beef is that if we are going to run out and claim we are fighting for our way of life it seems seriously hypocritical to then go and make laws that destroy that way of life.
But you want me to pony up, fine.
Did I say no eavesdropping? No. Honestly the problem with the DOJ's plan isn't that what they want to achieve but the way they are going about it. I can see their concerns and I think what they want to do may be necessary but there's absolutely no oversight in it outside of the DOJ. How about a congressional oversight commitee? How about a special judicial warrant? Yes these things would take time to set up, but if we really care about that way of life I think we need to show a little patience.
How do you deal with hijacking planes? Put armed police officers on board. Simple. It's clear how hard it is to sneak something more than knife on board an airplance because I'm sure they'd have prefered better firepower. So if we just have them outgunned by secret people on the plane, that's fine. Might be pricey but well worth it in my mind.
How do you stop car bombs, etc, you do it the same way that they always have. You use human intelligence. Any operation involving more than one person is prone to information leaks that can be picked up on. How many terrorist attacks don't happen for every one that does? Overall their methods are actually pretty effective. Yes, every so often something does go wrong, and on 9/11 something VERY big went wrong. It happens, and giveing the DOJ the keys to the kingdom doesn't solve that.
Let's remember here that the leader of this terrorist operation was a known suspected terrorist. I think there was a lot that could have been done to watch him better that wasn't. He could have been stopped with a proper investment in the legal tools that were at the DOJ's disposal before 9/11 happened. But it didn't stop him, so what makes us think giving all these more powers will make any greater difference.
Personally, and I'm sure many will find this controversial, nay abhorrent, but I think that the freedoms we have fought for in this country are worth sacrifice. That if every so often people have to die because we choose to live in a free society, then I think that's okay. I'd rather live free and die at the hands of a terrorist than turn this country into a police state. I grant you, I lost nobody I was close to on 9/11, so maybe I might feel different if that was the case, but from where I stand now, I feel that the people who died were some of the greatest patriots and that to throw away our rights to seek vengeance for them is a dishonors their memory.
But I digress. What it boils down to is that if we funded the DOJ better and the intelligence departments better and they did a better job of using the tools they have at their disposal, I think we could go a long way to stopping these terrorists without having to throw a bunch of liberty infringing laws on the books.
I could go into trying to create a better balanced world economy and ceasing to support opressive governments, but that's an entirely different story.
Actually, that kind of behavior can get a Lawyer disbarred. The court expects attorneys to give their clients the best defense possible. Furthermore, attorneys have it in their career interest to not reveal that information. I mean who wants to hire a lawyer who loses?
The biggest problem I see with this is that even if the DOJ followed the rules and didn't misuse the information, there's no way for a defendant in criminal prosecution to be sure. If you are being prosecuted and you know that your every conversation with your attorney is being listened too, how forthcoming will you be with them? You can't assume that the DOJ isn't breaking their own rules, so you clam up. The end result is that defense attorneys may have less information to work with and will be unable to build a proper defense for their clients. Eventually the courts will probably tell the DOJ they can't do this but in the mean time, how many people's legal cases will be effected by this new policy.
I find it bitterly ironic that we here Bush and crew saying that we are fighting for our way of life and for civilization, yet at the same time, they are doing their best to damage the freedoms that are key to that way of life. They say we need to go on with life as usual and not let the terrorists effect us, but it's not like they are leading by example here.
The PC platform that Gates is touting was created by IBM, not Microsoft. Sure, Microsoft software was running on all of them but what made it appealing was the low costs of the hardware which came about by IBM's rather loose licensing policies. It took a very long time for the PC to become vaguely usable, but it remained cheap and ubiquitous which is why it eventually came to dominate.
But Microsoft's position in that domination was, at best, an accident. They were in the right place at the right time and did a good job of screwing IBM. Credit to them for that, but not much else.
I think this survey is just evidence of the fact that no businesses are in any sort of risk taking position right now. While Linux may provide a cost savings, there's no guarantee, and no IT manager is willing to put his career on the line to proove it. In the high flying times of a few years ago, an IT manager could make such risks with less fear of repercussions (because worst case he gets fired and gets paid more money at his next job). Now, he's going to do everything to minimize his visibility and hope he can ride out the ecomonic downturn.
In bad economic times, companies freak out about risk reduction because ultimately, unplanned risks cand cost a lot more money than following the status quo. A corporation with a tight budget isn't going to go and blow millions of dollars moving to linux because if it goes wrong they may end up in a worse position. I'm sure some, desperate to cut costs somewhere, will make a transition feeling that the risk is worth it (see Amazon's move to Linux from Unix). But overall, most companies are in bunker mode, and that doesn't promote experimentation.
When the dust settles, Linux will still be there, a few more success stories under its belt, and that huge price tag for Windows or proprietary Unixes is gonna still be there too.
A large number of americans have a lottery mentality that they are always looking for some way to make lots of money with little effort. All of the economic bubbles have been built on this tendancy. The dot com boom and the related boom in VC funding for open source was all about getting the big payment without doing the hard work. When the dust settled turned out a lot of those companies didn't have a clue and died.
I think there's a lot of money to be made on open source, but that's spread out over a lot of people. Support, custom development, integration, lots of useful stuff that isn't sexy and isn't going to make anybody fabulously rich but is valuable and will provide a more than adequate living for a lot of people.
I think if anything open source is a big bomb shell for the whole notion of making the big money. A lot of companies who got cozy making proprietary software, charging huge license fees and then selling exhorbitant support contracts on top of that are in for a big wake up call. When everybody can have access to the code you don't need to be addicted to one vendor. That breeds competition, and competition drives down prices. Those companies that can provide the best services for the best prices and can create the best brand will be the ones collecting the money in the future but because they necessarily must be efficient it won't be the really big money.
The law is a place for things that make sense, but the law is intentionally a very slow moving cumbersome beast. Of course when there's a major shift in any realm governed by laws the law takes a while to catch up. Unfortunately this process of catching up can involve short term idiocy while the ramifications of the laws are truely understood. This process is further muddled because there are power structures built around the old way of doing things which are now at risk.
Right now what we see is that lawmakers are trying to maintain those power structures. The reasons for this are numerous but I think that in the long run as the negative impact of artificially sustaining these structures will become clear.
For example we talk here about whether this is software or a movie. Well it is software, but then every form of media is getting to be software of a sort. Identifying these things as software is fine, but the problem here is the notion that somehow being software changes the nature of the beast. It's the problem that somehow first sale doctrine is slowly getting corrupted by EULA's.
The concept of licensing of intellectual property was originally intended for dealing with small scope releases. You'd license information to a subsidiary or a contractor and because of the nature of the information it made sense to have broad restrictions on what they could do with that information. But when we are talking about mass commercial sales, a EULA makes no sense at all. Why should I be unable to sell my used copy of Microsoft Windows but be able to sell my used copy of a VNV Nation album? The purpose of EULA's was to limit the distribution and use of proprietary information but if things are being distributed on a broad scale, it doesn't make any sense (except for those wishing to usurp copyright law).
In order for a judge to instate an injunction, the plantiffs have to provide evidence that:
1) The likely ruling will be in favor of the plantiffs. Given the historical precedent of the VCR lawsuit this seems unlikely.
2) The injunctive relief is necessary to prevent some sort of serious damage to the plantiffs. In this case, they can't really proove that they would suffer any consequences so immediate as to require such a remedy.
So if they get a judge with their head screwed on straight I think Sonicblue will be okay. Of course I've seen a lot of insane judgements lately on these sorts of issues. So, I'm definitely keeping my fingers crossed.
If a photo is of interest to many people, then a digital photo can have a far superior life span to an analog photo. You put a photo on your website, and then a few thousand people download a copy. The more popular it is, the more likely it is that it will survive because somebody will care enough to back it up and keep up with the latest storage technology.
There was an excellent essay by an author that I saw a long while ago that this reminds me of. If somebody remembers what I'm talking about, please post a link. Basically the author who, if I recall accurately, was dying of some terminal illness, was trying to find a way to preserve his writings for posterity after his death. His conclusion was to put it on-line and let all the copies scatter across the net to be copied, and re-sent for the forseeable future.
The problem I can see with contemplating Wine as a tool to port games to Linux is that it will always be dependent on the whims of Microsoft's DirectX API's. Furthermore, the emulation insures that overall games will rarely perform as well under Linux as they do under Windows.
What might be a much better approach is to find a solid API that is compatbile with both systems. I'm sure somebody could write something far superior to DirectX and could provide compatibility for both Linux and Windows. The economics to fund such an endeavor might not be there but it definitely would be in the interests of Game Developers (so they could cooperatively fund some open source effort).
Wouldn't it be nice if a game could be ported between Linux, PC, X-box, PS2, Game Cube, and Macintoshes with little need for changes to the code. Then it would make the task of supporting multiple platforms nearly trivial. Basically I'm thinking something akin to Java, but written very specifically for gaming.
This may be slightly offtopic, but my thought came about because of how one problem with a developer can cascade into problems for other people, organizations, and companies.
What if somebody began contributing code to the Linux Kernel? It might take a while for them to develop a good reputation, but perhaps over a year or two make a number of important contributions to the system. Then after they've thoroughly integrated their code into the kernel it turns out that their code violates somebody's intelletcual property. Be that copyright, patent law, etc. How would that effect the Kernel?
What I was considering is that this might be a back door tactic that somebody like Microsoft could use. If they could get people to infest the kernel with copyrighted and patented code it could really hose up the works it seems.
I don't know the feasibility of such an attack, but I figured I'd throw it out there and see what people think. Please feel free to gun down my post:)
Can somebody tell me what we are supposed to do?
on
The Hypermedia Hazard
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· Score: 2
I agree that information has to get out there, and it seems as if most of the calls we get are people who are playing pranks more than anything else. Lots of people are exposed to Anthrax every day - it is a naturally occuring spore. And it is highly responsive to treatment when caught early.
I don't want this to sound sarcastic at all, because I seriously want to know what I should be doing. I have what appears to be a cold. Unfortunately a good strong cold or flu has all the same symptoms as an Anthrax infection. Now, if Anthrax is only treatable when it is caught early, do I go to the doctor right now and get tested just in case? If every person in the country is running to the doctor for anthrax testing every time they get a cold, we are going to way overburden the healthcare system.
So what do we do? We are being told "not to panic" and we are also being told to "be alert". Alert to what? What are we supposed to do? Aren't we supposed to be reporting every mysteriously unattended package? Aren't we supposed to be reporting every unusual powder? Aren't we supposed to be making sure we catch an Anthrax infection before it is too late? If not, then what are we supposed to be doing.
It seems that realistically the only approach we can take is either to vaccinate the whole population or use people as canaries in the coal mine. So basically we have to wait for people to die before we can take anybody seriously who comes to the hospital afraid that they have Anthrax. This is the facts, but I don't hear anybody in government saying this. They are saying it's treatable and that we can stop it, but they don't admit to the fact that ultimately we have to assume the first infected victims for any particular attack are screwed (like those postal workers and the guy in Florida). Frankly if they would just come out and say, "if you are one of the first infected you are screwed but we can help the rest," I might stop worrying about my cold because I'd realize there was jack shit I could do if it was Anthrax.
Not to plug myself, but I've got an article I wrote on my site earlier today where I discussed this. Okay, I suppose I am plugging myself, but oh well , it isn't like I make a cent on it:)
Basically it sets up a false Windows directory which includes all of the things a windows application might be looking for. Most applications seem to be okay with this set up but it entirely depends on the application though. For example I couldn't get Microsoft Word to install on a pure linux system, but I've heard that people can run it fine off another partition that is running windows. The only advantage to that setup is that you don't have to reboot to run windows apps. So if you were a developer who worked moslty under linux but occasionally had to write docs in Word, you could work relatively seemlessly.
This is not a demo unit. This is believed to be actual release hardware. Um, correct me if I'm wrong but BELIEVING something to be true and it being true are different, non? Reports from unofficial and unidentified sources say these are for real but they may not be. Let's not start making bold statements about Microsoft's screw up until we are certain they actually screwed up.
While there is nobody forcing them to release Emacs21 on a particular date, you can fare more easily get pre-release versions that might provide the support you need. It may be that you just need one nasty bug fixed and instead of having to wait for a whole new released version you can either fix the bug yourself or apply a patch.
If you are fixated on hard releases then open source is a little trickier, but if you can be more flexible then open source can be really helpful.
There are some medical conditions which lead to a person smelling awful and there's nothing that can really be done about it. That may not be the case here, but it is possible
There are far too many applications companies who have a vested interest in a vendor neutral operating system. They all know that Microsoft has totally taken over the desktop and that they are slowly infiltrating the server market. And since Microsoft likes to bundle applications together, they slowly drive companies like Oracle, Sun, and IBM to the periphery.
I'm certain that if any of those companies could have Microsoft's dominance of the O/S, they'd jump at it in a heart beat. But since they know that won't happen, having a standard that nobody dominates is a far cry better.
The base service was only 1 line I believe, but it was cheap to get up to 4 lines and the 4 line package came with an extra static IP.
But anyhow, what do you do with all those phone lines? Become a micro ISP of course:). A linux box, a couple modems, and you can have your own BBS/ISP. Why? Because you can:)
Slashdot Mirror
I think the trick is to have a lot of "supernodes", sites with relatively high bandwidth and relatively static connections. Maybe you'd even need some kind of meta-super-nodes, with completely static connections (but not necessarily too high of bandwidth), to point you to those supernodes.
:)
Sounds very similar to what LimeWire did to get around the inherent inadequacies of the Gnutella protocol. So perhaps pure distributed isn't effective, but a greater level of distribution could work.
Also the Super Node concept makes sense at the developer level as well. So Linus becomes a Super Node for Linux. Something in the system could keep track of key contributors to projects and note that they would be a good source for code updates, etc. While they may not be networked adequately themselves they could have pointers to where their ideal version of the code is being kept. Essentially create the notion of an authoritative source for certain code bases.
btw, I sent an "ask slashdot" on this so will be interesting to see if they post it
That's a very interesting idea. I'm just wondering how well development efforts can work without keeping the project somewhat centralized. Imagine for a moment a world where the Linux kernel doesn't have Linux and thousands of people are all releasing their own little patches to the code in a thousand different places. Seems like total chaos.
I do a lot of development using tools like CVS and even with a small team you can occasionally have problems with people forgetting to check in and causing conflicts. A massive web of people all working on their own tangents would turn that into utter chaos.
Seems like maybe the secret is some sort of very robust diff and dependancy tracking tool. If each patch could keep track of what patches it is dependant on, then when trying to apply a patch, it could inform you of dependancies it has an automatically get those patches. Of course I don't think this scales too well. If each patch has to keep track of patches it is dependent on then over time the patch files turn into huge lists of dependancies followed by a snippet of code.
I like the concept but I don't know if it's feasible...
If people out there take serious issue with Source Forge's turn to the proprietary, then take the last release of open source code and start your own Source Forge. I mean isn't that supposed to be one of the magical things about open source, that folks who want to go proprietary cannot because the community will hijack it.
Of course if you want to set up your own Source fFrge you have to have the money to run all of the servers, bandwidth, etc. Don't have the cash? Well I guess that's what Source Forge was running into as well.
Personally I think that Source Forge being open source itself was cool but rather secondary to the fact that source forge provides a great place for people to collaborate on projects. If they have to close the source to make it financially feasible to continue to provide the service, so be it. Which would be worse for the community: Source Forge running on proprietary software or Source Forge shutting down?
Unless the FSF is going to fund an open alternative to Source Forge they should get off their high horse.
If the lawyer is suspected to be relaying instructions, then it would actually be of benefit to NOT eavesdrop. Why? Because then the FBI can tail the attorney (based on a court order) and hopefully reveal the entire network. The big advantage to this is that you end up more readily finding out who the rest of the network is AND you can still prosecute.
So at least they are having the decency to call this out into the open rather than doing it secretly. I think what they are wanting to do here isn't entirely wrong but the way they are going about it is really bad. If this had strict judicial or congressional oversight I could probably be convinced that this is okay, but that they are just saying "trust us" seems risky.
When the DOJ brought this idea up it reminded me of the scandal that unfolded in LA over wiretaps. The LA police were taking wiretaps on a specific individual and then using information about other individuals, outside the scope of the warrant, to launch other investigations. The way they did this was by passing "anonymous tips" internally.
If a judge or congress was privy to all of the information that was being collected, then they would have the capability to smell out foul play by the DOJ. What i'm imagining is that somebody at the DOJ refers to an anonymous tip, so then the judge searches through a little database for that information and finds out it was in a transcript from a conversation that was supposed to be subject to attorney-client privilege.
I guess my beef is that if we are going to run out and claim we are fighting for our way of life it seems seriously hypocritical to then go and make laws that destroy that way of life.
But you want me to pony up, fine.
Did I say no eavesdropping? No. Honestly the problem with the DOJ's plan isn't that what they want to achieve but the way they are going about it. I can see their concerns and I think what they want to do may be necessary but there's absolutely no oversight in it outside of the DOJ. How about a congressional oversight commitee? How about a special judicial warrant? Yes these things would take time to set up, but if we really care about that way of life I think we need to show a little patience.
How do you deal with hijacking planes? Put armed police officers on board. Simple. It's clear how hard it is to sneak something more than knife on board an airplance because I'm sure they'd have prefered better firepower. So if we just have them outgunned by secret people on the plane, that's fine. Might be pricey but well worth it in my mind.
How do you stop car bombs, etc, you do it the same way that they always have. You use human intelligence. Any operation involving more than one person is prone to information leaks that can be picked up on. How many terrorist attacks don't happen for every one that does? Overall their methods are actually pretty effective. Yes, every so often something does go wrong, and on 9/11 something VERY big went wrong. It happens, and giveing the DOJ the keys to the kingdom doesn't solve that.
Let's remember here that the leader of this terrorist operation was a known suspected terrorist. I think there was a lot that could have been done to watch him better that wasn't. He could have been stopped with a proper investment in the legal tools that were at the DOJ's disposal before 9/11 happened. But it didn't stop him, so what makes us think giving all these more powers will make any greater difference.
Personally, and I'm sure many will find this controversial, nay abhorrent, but I think that the freedoms we have fought for in this country are worth sacrifice. That if every so often people have to die because we choose to live in a free society, then I think that's okay. I'd rather live free and die at the hands of a terrorist than turn this country into a police state. I grant you, I lost nobody I was close to on 9/11, so maybe I might feel different if that was the case, but from where I stand now, I feel that the people who died were some of the greatest patriots and that to throw away our rights to seek vengeance for them is a dishonors their memory.
But I digress. What it boils down to is that if we funded the DOJ better and the intelligence departments better and they did a better job of using the tools they have at their disposal, I think we could go a long way to stopping these terrorists without having to throw a bunch of liberty infringing laws on the books.
I could go into trying to create a better balanced world economy and ceasing to support opressive governments, but that's an entirely different story.
Actually, that kind of behavior can get a Lawyer disbarred. The court expects attorneys to give their clients the best defense possible. Furthermore, attorneys have it in their career interest to not reveal that information. I mean who wants to hire a lawyer who loses?
The biggest problem I see with this is that even if the DOJ followed the rules and didn't misuse the information, there's no way for a defendant in criminal prosecution to be sure. If you are being prosecuted and you know that your every conversation with your attorney is being listened too, how forthcoming will you be with them? You can't assume that the DOJ isn't breaking their own rules, so you clam up. The end result is that defense attorneys may have less information to work with and will be unable to build a proper defense for their clients. Eventually the courts will probably tell the DOJ they can't do this but in the mean time, how many people's legal cases will be effected by this new policy.
I find it bitterly ironic that we here Bush and crew saying that we are fighting for our way of life and for civilization, yet at the same time, they are doing their best to damage the freedoms that are key to that way of life. They say we need to go on with life as usual and not let the terrorists effect us, but it's not like they are leading by example here.
The PC platform that Gates is touting was created by IBM, not Microsoft. Sure, Microsoft software was running on all of them but what made it appealing was the low costs of the hardware which came about by IBM's rather loose licensing policies. It took a very long time for the PC to become vaguely usable, but it remained cheap and ubiquitous which is why it eventually came to dominate.
But Microsoft's position in that domination was, at best, an accident. They were in the right place at the right time and did a good job of screwing IBM. Credit to them for that, but not much else.
I think this survey is just evidence of the fact that no businesses are in any sort of risk taking position right now. While Linux may provide a cost savings, there's no guarantee, and no IT manager is willing to put his career on the line to proove it. In the high flying times of a few years ago, an IT manager could make such risks with less fear of repercussions (because worst case he gets fired and gets paid more money at his next job). Now, he's going to do everything to minimize his visibility and hope he can ride out the ecomonic downturn.
In bad economic times, companies freak out about risk reduction because ultimately, unplanned risks cand cost a lot more money than following the status quo. A corporation with a tight budget isn't going to go and blow millions of dollars moving to linux because if it goes wrong they may end up in a worse position. I'm sure some, desperate to cut costs somewhere, will make a transition feeling that the risk is worth it (see Amazon's move to Linux from Unix). But overall, most companies are in bunker mode, and that doesn't promote experimentation.
When the dust settles, Linux will still be there, a few more success stories under its belt, and that huge price tag for Windows or proprietary Unixes is gonna still be there too.
A large number of americans have a lottery mentality that they are always looking for some way to make lots of money with little effort. All of the economic bubbles have been built on this tendancy. The dot com boom and the related boom in VC funding for open source was all about getting the big payment without doing the hard work. When the dust settled turned out a lot of those companies didn't have a clue and died.
I think there's a lot of money to be made on open source, but that's spread out over a lot of people. Support, custom development, integration, lots of useful stuff that isn't sexy and isn't going to make anybody fabulously rich but is valuable and will provide a more than adequate living for a lot of people.
I think if anything open source is a big bomb shell for the whole notion of making the big money. A lot of companies who got cozy making proprietary software, charging huge license fees and then selling exhorbitant support contracts on top of that are in for a big wake up call. When everybody can have access to the code you don't need to be addicted to one vendor. That breeds competition, and competition drives down prices. Those companies that can provide the best services for the best prices and can create the best brand will be the ones collecting the money in the future but because they necessarily must be efficient it won't be the really big money.
So when was the last time you heard about somebody building something like a beowulf cluster out of Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP boxes?
It lags in some areas I grant you but it isn't all catch up.
The law is a place for things that make sense, but the law is intentionally a very slow moving cumbersome beast. Of course when there's a major shift in any realm governed by laws the law takes a while to catch up. Unfortunately this process of catching up can involve short term idiocy while the ramifications of the laws are truely understood. This process is further muddled because there are power structures built around the old way of doing things which are now at risk.
Right now what we see is that lawmakers are trying to maintain those power structures. The reasons for this are numerous but I think that in the long run as the negative impact of artificially sustaining these structures will become clear.
For example we talk here about whether this is software or a movie. Well it is software, but then every form of media is getting to be software of a sort. Identifying these things as software is fine, but the problem here is the notion that somehow being software changes the nature of the beast. It's the problem that somehow first sale doctrine is slowly getting corrupted by EULA's.
The concept of licensing of intellectual property was originally intended for dealing with small scope releases. You'd license information to a subsidiary or a contractor and because of the nature of the information it made sense to have broad restrictions on what they could do with that information. But when we are talking about mass commercial sales, a EULA makes no sense at all. Why should I be unable to sell my used copy of Microsoft Windows but be able to sell my used copy of a VNV Nation album? The purpose of EULA's was to limit the distribution and use of proprietary information but if things are being distributed on a broad scale, it doesn't make any sense (except for those wishing to usurp copyright law).
In order for a judge to instate an injunction, the plantiffs have to provide evidence that:
1) The likely ruling will be in favor of the plantiffs. Given the historical precedent of the VCR lawsuit this seems unlikely.
2) The injunctive relief is necessary to prevent some sort of serious damage to the plantiffs. In this case, they can't really proove that they would suffer any consequences so immediate as to require such a remedy.
So if they get a judge with their head screwed on straight I think Sonicblue will be okay. Of course I've seen a lot of insane judgements lately on these sorts of issues. So, I'm definitely keeping my fingers crossed.
If a photo is of interest to many people, then a digital photo can have a far superior life span to an analog photo. You put a photo on your website, and then a few thousand people download a copy. The more popular it is, the more likely it is that it will survive because somebody will care enough to back it up and keep up with the latest storage technology.
There was an excellent essay by an author that I saw a long while ago that this reminds me of. If somebody remembers what I'm talking about, please post a link. Basically the author who, if I recall accurately, was dying of some terminal illness, was trying to find a way to preserve his writings for posterity after his death. His conclusion was to put it on-line and let all the copies scatter across the net to be copied, and re-sent for the forseeable future.
The problem I can see with contemplating Wine as a tool to port games to Linux is that it will always be dependent on the whims of Microsoft's DirectX API's. Furthermore, the emulation insures that overall games will rarely perform as well under Linux as they do under Windows.
What might be a much better approach is to find a solid API that is compatbile with both systems. I'm sure somebody could write something far superior to DirectX and could provide compatibility for both Linux and Windows. The economics to fund such an endeavor might not be there but it definitely would be in the interests of Game Developers (so they could cooperatively fund some open source effort).
Wouldn't it be nice if a game could be ported between Linux, PC, X-box, PS2, Game Cube, and Macintoshes with little need for changes to the code. Then it would make the task of supporting multiple platforms nearly trivial. Basically I'm thinking something akin to Java, but written very specifically for gaming.
This may be slightly offtopic, but my thought came about because of how one problem with a developer can cascade into problems for other people, organizations, and companies.
:)
What if somebody began contributing code to the Linux Kernel? It might take a while for them to develop a good reputation, but perhaps over a year or two make a number of important contributions to the system. Then after they've thoroughly integrated their code into the kernel it turns out that their code violates somebody's intelletcual property. Be that copyright, patent law, etc. How would that effect the Kernel?
What I was considering is that this might be a back door tactic that somebody like Microsoft could use. If they could get people to infest the kernel with copyrighted and patented code it could really hose up the works it seems.
I don't know the feasibility of such an attack, but I figured I'd throw it out there and see what people think. Please feel free to gun down my post
I agree that information has to get out there, and it seems as if most of the calls we get are people who are playing pranks more than anything else. Lots of people are exposed to Anthrax every day - it is a naturally occuring spore. And it is highly responsive to treatment when caught early.
:)
I don't want this to sound sarcastic at all, because I seriously want to know what I should be doing. I have what appears to be a cold. Unfortunately a good strong cold or flu has all the same symptoms as an Anthrax infection. Now, if Anthrax is only treatable when it is caught early, do I go to the doctor right now and get tested just in case? If every person in the country is running to the doctor for anthrax testing every time they get a cold, we are going to way overburden the healthcare system.
So what do we do? We are being told "not to panic" and we are also being told to "be alert". Alert to what? What are we supposed to do? Aren't we supposed to be reporting every mysteriously unattended package? Aren't we supposed to be reporting every unusual powder? Aren't we supposed to be making sure we catch an Anthrax infection before it is too late? If not, then what are we supposed to be doing.
It seems that realistically the only approach we can take is either to vaccinate the whole population or use people as canaries in the coal mine. So basically we have to wait for people to die before we can take anybody seriously who comes to the hospital afraid that they have Anthrax. This is the facts, but I don't hear anybody in government saying this. They are saying it's treatable and that we can stop it, but they don't admit to the fact that ultimately we have to assume the first infected victims for any particular attack are screwed (like those postal workers and the guy in Florida). Frankly if they would just come out and say, "if you are one of the first infected you are screwed but we can help the rest," I might stop worrying about my cold because I'd realize there was jack shit I could do if it was Anthrax.
Not to plug myself, but I've got an article I wrote on my site earlier today where I discussed this. Okay, I suppose I am plugging myself, but oh well , it isn't like I make a cent on it
Basically it sets up a false Windows directory which includes all of the things a windows application might be looking for. Most applications seem to be okay with this set up but it entirely depends on the application though. For example I couldn't get Microsoft Word to install on a pure linux system, but I've heard that people can run it fine off another partition that is running windows. The only advantage to that setup is that you don't have to reboot to run windows apps. So if you were a developer who worked moslty under linux but occasionally had to write docs in Word, you could work relatively seemlessly.
This is not a demo unit. This is believed to be actual release hardware.
Um, correct me if I'm wrong but BELIEVING something to be true and it being true are different, non? Reports from unofficial and unidentified sources say these are for real but they may not be. Let's not start making bold statements about Microsoft's screw up until we are certain they actually screwed up.
While there is nobody forcing them to release Emacs21 on a particular date, you can fare more easily get pre-release versions that might provide the support you need. It may be that you just need one nasty bug fixed and instead of having to wait for a whole new released version you can either fix the bug yourself or apply a patch.
If you are fixated on hard releases then open source is a little trickier, but if you can be more flexible then open source can be really helpful.
It's a paraphrase of Ben Franklin and the original quote was:
:)
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
For some reason this quote keeps coming up a lot lately. I wonder why
There are some medical conditions which lead to a person smelling awful and there's nothing that can really be done about it. That may not be the case here, but it is possible
There are far too many applications companies who have a vested interest in a vendor neutral operating system. They all know that Microsoft has totally taken over the desktop and that they are slowly infiltrating the server market. And since Microsoft likes to bundle applications together, they slowly drive companies like Oracle, Sun, and IBM to the periphery.
I'm certain that if any of those companies could have Microsoft's dominance of the O/S, they'd jump at it in a heart beat. But since they know that won't happen, having a standard that nobody dominates is a far cry better.
The base service was only 1 line I believe, but it was cheap to get up to 4 lines and the 4 line package came with an extra static IP.
:). A linux box, a couple modems, and you can have your own BBS/ISP. Why? Because you can :)
But anyhow, what do you do with all those phone lines? Become a micro ISP of course