the model of 'free with ads' is, i think, best epitomized by Eudora, the email program i've used on every computer that i couldn't use elm or pine on (i.e. Macs)
Eudora, for as long as i can remember, has come in two flavors: a free, bare bones 'lite' version and a commercial, full featured 'pro' version. i think this is based on the original authors' licence to qualcomm requiring that the program be free, at least in some form
the lite version is usable, and even the older lite clients still beat any other free email client i've used with a big STiK.
the last couple of revisions have added a third layer to the lite/pro (free/paid) strategy, that being a 'sponsored' version. the sponsored version includes all the features of the Pro version, but is free. the 'sponsorship' comes in the form of a small floating ad pane that is as unintrusive as a 100x100 (or thereabouts) pixel floating window can be. and the best thing is that the different versions of the program are all in one binary.
for 40 bucks i can get a serial number to get rid of the window, or, since i'm a cheapskate, i can put up with the ads. or i can click one preference option and get rid of the ads, and 'downgrade' to the free/ad-free version of the program. most of the ads are for the commercial version of eudora anyway...
"This movie doesn't have a cellphone, computer, or explosion in it."
i beg to differ.. at the very end, when you see the interior of elijah 'mr. glass'' office, you see that he has not one, not two, but three Apple G4s with matching 15'' LCD screens running... wait for it.. screen savers.
woohoo apple product placement! i nominate this ten second scene for best gratuitous use of technology for eye candy, without making any substantive contribution to the scenery. oy.
and oh yeah, i dig comics, and i dig movies, and this one sucked rocks.
ah, yes.. but this has all three capabilities in one unit, without having to swap out springboard modules. granted, if you only want one or the other, and can live without the others, get a visor and live in the lap of software availability luxury..
but then, that's assuming there's no software for linux..
maybe Q3 isn't appropriate for an embedded linux celphone, but i could really dig MAME or any number of PIMs, notepad alternatives.. hey, an SSH client that could connect to my server remotely from my celphone would be keen to have, too...
"Plays MP3 and video, has bluetooth, and runs embedded Qt. And has net functionality."
damn.. does it slice, dice, mince, chop, and frappe' as well?
anyhoo, it sounds like the cel phone i've been waiting for. now i can get a niftee-tron celphone-o-matic with MP3, a linux interface and bluetooth that will ring really loud in the middle of a movie. or, better yet, i can tap tap tap on the little embedded Qt interface trying to find a phone number while i'm driving and kill a schoolbus full of kids!
no no no.. wait. i can play MP3s on the thing and look like the complete idiot in the commercials... with linux!
as their motto - "of course it runs NetBSD" - implies, you can run a non OS X BSD on your mac: NetBSD. if you have a G3 or better, and can run OS X, i'd recommend Darwin, if only because it needs the user base and the bug reporting/developing effort right now.
the fully righteous NetBSD will run on most macs, and will give you a better experience in most cases than even LinuxPPC, simply because of the parity between the releases / ports. netbsd/macPPC already runs on the G4 cube (as of the beta of 1.5) and just about everything back to the first PCI powermacs. silly nubus architecture...
i even have netbsd/mac68k (formerly macBSD) running on an LCii, which has given the little bugger a whole new lease on life.
actually, the earth gains weight every day, as dust particles, bits of comets, and other debris that arrive as meteors, fall into earth's path. the amount of junk we throw into orbit is inconsequential in comparison.
sure, it's effected our orbit over the last few billion years, but not in a significant way, as compared to the total mass of the earth, this, too, is inconsequential.
so, mine your asteroids. bring the raw materials here. if we get too overweight, by that point we'll have the facilities to ship some of our surplus biomass off-planet to compensate:)
first of all, there is no mac OS 7.9, and if you have a 100mhz PowerPC box, you should be able to run OS 9, which is the currently shipping - and thus only available - OS for that mac. if you let me know the model number, and thus whether it's a Nubus (x100) or a PCI box (x500, x600, etc), that will determine how well it runs linuxPPC, if at all.
if you're not able to run OS 9 (check the apple site to see what they recommend for that model, ram, etc) you might be able to get an older 8.x version on ebay or at Sun Remarketing. that's where i got system 6 for one of my old toaster macs.
in any event, 100 mhz PPC should run linux like a champ, and, if the video is decent, should make an excellent X box.
icab kicks major booty on mac OS 8.x and 9, and comes in a carbonized version for OS X already (though the X version is a little slow), and it's the only browser i know if that i can install on 68k macs, powerPC macs, and G3 macs running OS X - and have all 3 running the same version of the browser.
as for its superiority over all other comers, i'm reserving judgement until the final release comes out with CSS and complete javascript support (and then going through and looking back at all my CSS-heavy sites), but as it is, it's already my default browser at home and at work - mostly because i can filter out ads and images from specific servers to speed up getting to the guts of what i'm looking for. it's also my default test platform for any webpage i put together because i know if it doesn't look good in icab, it won't look good in anything else.
a couple of problems persist, though, that require i keep a copy of netscape aggrivator or internet exploiter around - the main one being https support (though arguably, that's apple's fault for only supporting encryption up to a point in their url access toolkit, and even that's fixed now with the latest software update...)
what was my point again? oh yeah.. i can't get the download to work from the netscape site - probably due to the 'prerelease' status as noted elsewhere... anyhoo, i'm rambling.
well, something like this. more violence on the internet==less violence in reality, more porn in school==less violence in school. it's a similar tack, anyway.
it's not too terribly difficult to build on an additional drive system to steer with - you have to get out of earth orbit somehow, anyway - but beside that, there are a multitude of ways to get to places in the solar system without much more than the magnetic sail
for instance, as you said, by turning on the sail, you increase your orbit. by constantly increasing your orbital distance from the sun whilst you revolve around it, you can intercept an object in a higher orbit without much bother. changing orbital direction would involve some kind of propellant, or else whipping around a planet or something.
i'm not the biggest physics nut, but how feasible might it be to put two drives tethered together at a distance, and varying the power of one or the other of the drives in order to get a lateral steering effect - in effect making the sail "flatter" in order to tack.
also, there's no reason not to build a large light sail inside your magnetic bubble, which would grab the light from the sun as well as the wind, with the added effect that the field would protect the sail from heavier particles of dust, etc.
there are other things that might get a little wonky being in the middle of a big magnetic field - Larry Niven's stories come to mind, with the problems involving the damage to living systems in the middle of such fields - but there's no reason you couldn't use the sail as more of a kite
put your fuel and your magnets on a probe and extend a long boom outside the field, or else far enough out to make the effects negligible, and build your life support there. let the sail tow the life support system along.
tho, now that i think of it, the sail might be better off pushing the life system around rather than pulling, as the field acts as a shield against the debris and radiation of the solar wind...
we've been talking around the office about this since it came up, so we have a few ideas already:)
first of all, there would have to be some other kind of drive in order to leave orbit in the first place, or even simply for steering, so that could be used for braking, etc.
then there's the option of the "2010" gravity-braking slingshot gambit, whereby one who is travelling at breakneck speeds whips around a nearby planet - optionally skipping off the atmosphere - slowing down enough to enter orbit at the target planet. the same trick can be used simply enough to steer - NASA's been doing it for years - or to head back in toward the sun after building up a velocity heading out
let's say you're headed for venus, but the cheapest way to get there would be to build up a good velocity by heading out towards jupiter first, then whipping around big J, turning off the magnets (or turning down the power) and coasting back towards the sun, catching venus on the way. this isn't all that efficient, since you can build up enough speed whipping around the earth-moon system a few times, but you get the idea - especially if the planet you're aiming for won't be on this side of the solar system for another 90 years (hello pluto!)
on the topic of longer distances - say another star - it's a simple matter of heading out on the solar wind, and using the other star's push to brake.
the problems we see remaining involve being in interstallar space, outside the influence of any solar wind. sure, the velocity would be nice and constant, but short of another drive system, there's little to use for acceleration, steering, etc.
that's right. microsoft wasn't the first to the market - it was apple or digital research or IBM, depending on which particular market you're referring to, and which version of history you believe.
and transmeta's not the first to their market, either. they're following intel, AMD, motorola, etc into the processor fray with something new and different. they're not defining a new market so much as redefining an old one.
of course, the point is moot if they can't deliver.
does this guy even use the operating system he's trying to emulate?
if he did he'd realize there's no validity to his claim that OSX won't run older software. if it runs under OS9, it'll run in classic. and, if i'm not mistaken - and i'm not - the one piece of code that gets used more often than any other, and optimized more often as well, is the 68k emulator written into the OS in the days of system 7 (.5 i think). why? well, as i've said before, the OS in those days was entirely 68k code, and as powerPC architecture was introduced, bits and pieces were recompiled as PPC native, but not all of it.
and none of the software was. hence, the system-level software emulation of 68k on PPC. and, by golly, it's still there in OS9 - and hence classic.
there's nothing like building in backward compatibility that's backwardly compatible.
who's this guy's potential customer base again? those wanting to run 68 mac apps? let them buy a new mac.
no, the original mac OS was a graphical system, could actually network, and was not the pet project of a computer science professor looking to teach his students how to write an OS in one semester.
tho there is a version of minix that will run on old toaster macs, called macminix. try it some time. the experience is somewhat surreal.
never before have i read a more well-written, thought-out letter that does nothing more than bitch, moan and whine about basically everything and everyone in the computer industry.
apple, for taking time to perfect a next generation OS, as well as making that next generation OS unsupported on 10 year-old macs. i'll admit this is something that goes against apple's tradition of computers that ran for years past their realistic limits, but it's a step that needs taking - supporting mac my IIci as well as my G3 on the same OS is not something the new Apple can afford to do. after all, and i keep saying this, Apple is a hardware company. let me repeat: Apple is a hardware company. if intel wrote OSes, do you think IntelOS2000 would run on anything less than a P3? widgets, people..
and another thing, he mentions mac OS 7.5 - which is almost entirely 68k code. the reason the newer mac OSes don't run on your 68k macs of 10 years ago is because Apple had the balls back then to switch their entire line from CISC 68k to RISC powerPC and migrate their OS to all powerPC native code - which he still can't emulate, even now.
microsoft, for writing a buggy OS that breaks his assembly-level hacks. pick your battles, my friend.
and how the bloody fuck do you get NT to run on a 386 with 20 megs of RAM? maybe you consider booting (in about a day and a half) then dropping to debugger/BSOD "running" but i doubt any NT app will run usefully under such conditions. all this really tells us is how similar the new PC hardware is to the old PC hardware - golly, when they say X86, they really mean X86, huh...
Intel, for releasing, then recalling their buggy P4s, and generally being slower than AMD. again, pick your battles. and again, for being behind schedule on their next generation processors - itanium/ia64 or whatever. if Intel had hit every announced date on their roadmap, we wouldn't be having this discussion
it's a good thing this guy doesn't write emulators that run PC software on Macs, or else he'd have firebombed Motorola by now.
and AMD, for being a niche player and not having the production facilities to pump out as many gigahertz athlons as Intel can P3s.
let's see, who else does he mention? oh. his customers and even worse, potential customers for not sharing his vision.
oh well. i'll stick to virtual PC on my G3 - connectix doesn't bitch when microsoft releases a new OS, it just runs - and WINE on my linux box, which i can run in emulation under virtual PC if i feel like it:)
well, now i have an excuse to pick up one of the surplus SPARCstation workstations at the local surplus sale. before, i was too worried i wouldn't know enough about solaris to do much with the little bugger, but if i can pry it open and squeeze a decent (and SuSE is that, at least) linux distro on it, i can likely make good use on my LAN..
of course, i'd have to pick up one of the sun monitors to go with, the one with the wacky plug that doesn't fit any other computer on the planet.. but i'm used to that - the rest of my network is macs:)
the name change, which is generating the same comments on/. as it was around the office (twiddling finger over lips, porky pig, etc) is something of a distraction, it seems, from the goal of ibiblio
ibiblio (pronounced EYE bib lee oh, or by twiddling one's finger over one's lips) is "the public's library," a collaboration between UNC-CH (the home of metalab) and the RedHat center (the home of Bob Young's stock options) and has the goal of encompassing much more than just the metalab content, though that is the only thing under the ibiblio ubmbrella for now, and will likely continue to be the lion's share of what is there for a while to come.
so, it isn't that SunSITE/metalab == ibiblio, but rather that ibiblio == metalab + (add bunch of open source projects and archives here)
(consider i'm a little miffed that, once again, i submit a story in a timely manner, holding off on posting until the day of the press conference, and several days later another poster gets the same story posted where mine was rejected. silly me, i thought i had the inside track - being one of the designers of the new ibilio site.. oh well)
the donation did not come from RedHat, as many readers assume. the headline even says the money came from individual investors, which is closer to the mark. reading the full story will reveal that the $4 million donation came from the Red Hat Center (center of what?) which is a "non-profit organization that supports, promotes, and engages in a wide range of initiatives to advance the principles of transparent technology" (Bob Young's term for open source)
the guys from Red Hat started the Center with their own money (acquired from.. duh!) to use in promoting open source projects, even those in competition with RedHat.
RHC has also given big chunks of change (tho none in the $4 million range) to the EFF (electronic fronteirs foundation), probono.net, and the Center for Media Education in Washington, DC
something folks haven't said much about is the plan to make ibiblio more slashdot-like in its sense of community, discussions, and ranking of the content. silly me, i would have thought cmdrtaco would have mentioned that:)
Slashdot Mirror
the model of 'free with ads' is, i think, best epitomized by Eudora, the email program i've used on every computer that i couldn't use elm or pine on (i.e. Macs)
Eudora, for as long as i can remember, has come in two flavors: a free, bare bones 'lite' version and a commercial, full featured 'pro' version. i think this is based on the original authors' licence to qualcomm requiring that the program be free, at least in some form
the lite version is usable, and even the older lite clients still beat any other free email client i've used with a big STiK.
the last couple of revisions have added a third layer to the lite/pro (free/paid) strategy, that being a 'sponsored' version. the sponsored version includes all the features of the Pro version, but is free. the 'sponsorship' comes in the form of a small floating ad pane that is as unintrusive as a 100x100 (or thereabouts) pixel floating window can be. and the best thing is that the different versions of the program are all in one binary.
for 40 bucks i can get a serial number to get rid of the window, or, since i'm a cheapskate, i can put up with the ads. or i can click one preference option and get rid of the ads, and 'downgrade' to the free/ad-free version of the program. most of the ads are for the commercial version of eudora anyway...
"This movie doesn't have a cellphone, computer, or explosion in it."
i beg to differ.. at the very end, when you see the interior of elijah 'mr. glass'' office, you see that he has not one, not two, but three Apple G4s with matching 15'' LCD screens running... wait for it.. screen savers.
woohoo apple product placement! i nominate this ten second scene for best gratuitous use of technology for eye candy, without making any substantive contribution to the scenery. oy.
and oh yeah, i dig comics, and i dig movies, and this one sucked rocks.
ah, yes.. but this has all three capabilities in one unit, without having to swap out springboard modules. granted, if you only want one or the other, and can live without the others, get a visor and live in the lap of software availability luxury..
but then, that's assuming there's no software for linux..
maybe Q3 isn't appropriate for an embedded linux celphone, but i could really dig MAME or any number of PIMs, notepad alternatives.. hey, an SSH client that could connect to my server remotely from my celphone would be keen to have, too...
hmm...
"Plays MP3 and video, has bluetooth, and runs embedded Qt. And has net functionality."
damn.. does it slice, dice, mince, chop, and frappe' as well?
anyhoo, it sounds like the cel phone i've been waiting for. now i can get a niftee-tron celphone-o-matic with MP3, a linux interface and bluetooth that will ring really loud in the middle of a movie. or, better yet, i can tap tap tap on the little embedded Qt interface trying to find a phone number while i'm driving and kill a schoolbus full of kids!
no no no.. wait. i can play MP3s on the thing and look like the complete idiot in the commercials... with linux!
as their motto - "of course it runs NetBSD" - implies, you can run a non OS X BSD on your mac: NetBSD. if you have a G3 or better, and can run OS X, i'd recommend Darwin, if only because it needs the user base and the bug reporting/developing effort right now.
the fully righteous NetBSD will run on most macs, and will give you a better experience in most cases than even LinuxPPC, simply because of the parity between the releases / ports. netbsd/macPPC already runs on the G4 cube (as of the beta of 1.5) and just about everything back to the first PCI powermacs. silly nubus architecture...
i even have netbsd/mac68k (formerly macBSD) running on an LCii, which has given the little bugger a whole new lease on life.
actually, the earth gains weight every day, as dust particles, bits of comets, and other debris that arrive as meteors, fall into earth's path. the amount of junk we throw into orbit is inconsequential in comparison.
:)
sure, it's effected our orbit over the last few billion years, but not in a significant way, as compared to the total mass of the earth, this, too, is inconsequential.
so, mine your asteroids. bring the raw materials here. if we get too overweight, by that point we'll have the facilities to ship some of our surplus biomass off-planet to compensate
first of all, there is no mac OS 7.9, and if you have a 100mhz PowerPC box, you should be able to run OS 9, which is the currently shipping - and thus only available - OS for that mac. if you let me know the model number, and thus whether it's a Nubus (x100) or a PCI box (x500, x600, etc), that will determine how well it runs linuxPPC, if at all.
if you're not able to run OS 9 (check the apple site to see what they recommend for that model, ram, etc) you might be able to get an older 8.x version on ebay or at Sun Remarketing. that's where i got system 6 for one of my old toaster macs.
in any event, 100 mhz PPC should run linux like a champ, and, if the video is decent, should make an excellent X box.
damned straight.
icab kicks major booty on mac OS 8.x and 9, and comes in a carbonized version for OS X already (though the X version is a little slow), and it's the only browser i know if that i can install on 68k macs, powerPC macs, and G3 macs running OS X - and have all 3 running the same version of the browser.
as for its superiority over all other comers, i'm reserving judgement until the final release comes out with CSS and complete javascript support (and then going through and looking back at all my CSS-heavy sites), but as it is, it's already my default browser at home and at work - mostly because i can filter out ads and images from specific servers to speed up getting to the guts of what i'm looking for. it's also my default test platform for any webpage i put together because i know if it doesn't look good in icab, it won't look good in anything else.
a couple of problems persist, though, that require i keep a copy of netscape aggrivator or internet exploiter around - the main one being https support (though arguably, that's apple's fault for only supporting encryption up to a point in their url access toolkit, and even that's fixed now with the latest software update...)
what was my point again? oh yeah.. i can't get the download to work from the netscape site - probably due to the 'prerelease' status as noted elsewhere... anyhoo, i'm rambling.
silly url got truncated:
try here
i proposed this more than a year ago on mentalhygiene
well, something like this. more violence on the internet==less violence in reality, more porn in school==less violence in school. it's a similar tack, anyway.
if you're running into a star, it would have its own solar (stellar?) wind, so you'd coast to a stop.
..then start accelerating in reverse!
it's not too terribly difficult to build on an additional drive system to steer with - you have to get out of earth orbit somehow, anyway - but beside that, there are a multitude of ways to get to places in the solar system without much more than the magnetic sail
for instance, as you said, by turning on the sail, you increase your orbit. by constantly increasing your orbital distance from the sun whilst you revolve around it, you can intercept an object in a higher orbit without much bother. changing orbital direction would involve some kind of propellant, or else whipping around a planet or something.
i'm not the biggest physics nut, but how feasible might it be to put two drives tethered together at a distance, and varying the power of one or the other of the drives in order to get a lateral steering effect - in effect making the sail "flatter" in order to tack.
also, there's no reason not to build a large light sail inside your magnetic bubble, which would grab the light from the sun as well as the wind, with the added effect that the field would protect the sail from heavier particles of dust, etc.
there are other things that might get a little wonky being in the middle of a big magnetic field - Larry Niven's stories come to mind, with the problems involving the damage to living systems in the middle of such fields - but there's no reason you couldn't use the sail as more of a kite
put your fuel and your magnets on a probe and extend a long boom outside the field, or else far enough out to make the effects negligible, and build your life support there. let the sail tow the life support system along.
tho, now that i think of it, the sail might be better off pushing the life system around rather than pulling, as the field acts as a shield against the debris and radiation of the solar wind...
we've been talking around the office about this since it came up, so we have a few ideas already :)
first of all, there would have to be some other kind of drive in order to leave orbit in the first place, or even simply for steering, so that could be used for braking, etc.
then there's the option of the "2010" gravity-braking slingshot gambit, whereby one who is travelling at breakneck speeds whips around a nearby planet - optionally skipping off the atmosphere - slowing down enough to enter orbit at the target planet. the same trick can be used simply enough to steer - NASA's been doing it for years - or to head back in toward the sun after building up a velocity heading out
let's say you're headed for venus, but the cheapest way to get there would be to build up a good velocity by heading out towards jupiter first, then whipping around big J, turning off the magnets (or turning down the power) and coasting back towards the sun, catching venus on the way. this isn't all that efficient, since you can build up enough speed whipping around the earth-moon system a few times, but you get the idea - especially if the planet you're aiming for won't be on this side of the solar system for another 90 years (hello pluto!)
on the topic of longer distances - say another star - it's a simple matter of heading out on the solar wind, and using the other star's push to brake.
the problems we see remaining involve being in interstallar space, outside the influence of any solar wind. sure, the velocity would be nice and constant, but short of another drive system, there's little to use for acceleration, steering, etc.
okay, who else has visions of comic book supervillain magneto and his magnetic bubbles?
:)
magneto put all kinds of fun things into space with his bubbles - space ships, people, asteroids, the Avengers: West Coast mansion...
maybe the guys at nasa aren't just watching Star Wars movies, but reading comics, too
it must be a slow news day for /. if we're posting our server logs..
that's right. microsoft wasn't the first to the market - it was apple or digital research or IBM, depending on which particular market you're referring to, and which version of history you believe.
and transmeta's not the first to their market, either. they're following intel, AMD, motorola, etc into the processor fray with something new and different. they're not defining a new market so much as redefining an old one.
of course, the point is moot if they can't deliver.
does this guy even use the operating system he's trying to emulate?
if he did he'd realize there's no validity to his claim that OSX won't run older software. if it runs under OS9, it'll run in classic. and, if i'm not mistaken - and i'm not - the one piece of code that gets used more often than any other, and optimized more often as well, is the 68k emulator written into the OS in the days of system 7 (.5 i think). why? well, as i've said before, the OS in those days was entirely 68k code, and as powerPC architecture was introduced, bits and pieces were recompiled as PPC native, but not all of it.
and none of the software was. hence, the system-level software emulation of 68k on PPC. and, by golly, it's still there in OS9 - and hence classic.
there's nothing like building in backward compatibility that's backwardly compatible.
who's this guy's potential customer base again? those wanting to run 68 mac apps? let them buy a new mac.
mac os based on minix? (blink)
no, the original mac OS was a graphical system, could actually network, and was not the pet project of a computer science professor looking to teach his students how to write an OS in one semester.
tho there is a version of minix that will run on old toaster macs, called macminix. try it some time. the experience is somewhat surreal.
never before have i read a more well-written, thought-out letter that does nothing more than bitch, moan and whine about basically everything and everyone in the computer industry.
:)
apple, for taking time to perfect a next generation OS, as well as making that next generation OS unsupported on 10 year-old macs. i'll admit this is something that goes against apple's tradition of computers that ran for years past their realistic limits, but it's a step that needs taking - supporting mac my IIci as well as my G3 on the same OS is not something the new Apple can afford to do. after all, and i keep saying this, Apple is a hardware company. let me repeat: Apple is a hardware company. if intel wrote OSes, do you think IntelOS2000 would run on anything less than a P3? widgets, people..
and another thing, he mentions mac OS 7.5 - which is almost entirely 68k code. the reason the newer mac OSes don't run on your 68k macs of 10 years ago is because Apple had the balls back then to switch their entire line from CISC 68k to RISC powerPC and migrate their OS to all powerPC native code - which he still can't emulate, even now.
microsoft, for writing a buggy OS that breaks his assembly-level hacks. pick your battles, my friend.
and how the bloody fuck do you get NT to run on a 386 with 20 megs of RAM? maybe you consider booting (in about a day and a half) then dropping to debugger/BSOD "running" but i doubt any NT app will run usefully under such conditions. all this really tells us is how similar the new PC hardware is to the old PC hardware - golly, when they say X86, they really mean X86, huh...
Intel, for releasing, then recalling their buggy P4s, and generally being slower than AMD. again, pick your battles. and again, for being behind schedule on their next generation processors - itanium/ia64 or whatever. if Intel had hit every announced date on their roadmap, we wouldn't be having this discussion
it's a good thing this guy doesn't write emulators that run PC software on Macs, or else he'd have firebombed Motorola by now.
and AMD, for being a niche player and not having the production facilities to pump out as many gigahertz athlons as Intel can P3s.
let's see, who else does he mention? oh. his customers and even worse, potential customers for not sharing his vision.
oh well. i'll stick to virtual PC on my G3 - connectix doesn't bitch when microsoft releases a new OS, it just runs - and WINE on my linux box, which i can run in emulation under virtual PC if i feel like it
well, now i have an excuse to pick up one of the surplus SPARCstation workstations at the local surplus sale. before, i was too worried i wouldn't know enough about solaris to do much with the little bugger, but if i can pry it open and squeeze a decent (and SuSE is that, at least) linux distro on it, i can likely make good use on my LAN..
:)
of course, i'd have to pick up one of the sun monitors to go with, the one with the wacky plug that doesn't fit any other computer on the planet.. but i'm used to that - the rest of my network is macs
yeah, this guy and his elite team of hackers, who keep metalab up and running.
and, oh yeah, moderators, mod this one up.
the name change, which is generating the same comments on /. as it was around the office (twiddling finger over lips, porky pig, etc) is something of a distraction, it seems, from the goal of ibiblio
ibiblio (pronounced EYE bib lee oh, or by twiddling one's finger over one's lips) is "the public's library," a collaboration between UNC-CH (the home of metalab) and the RedHat center (the home of Bob Young's stock options) and has the goal of encompassing much more than just the metalab content, though that is the only thing under the ibiblio ubmbrella for now, and will likely continue to be the lion's share of what is there for a while to come.
so, it isn't that SunSITE/metalab == ibiblio, but rather that ibiblio == metalab + (add bunch of open source projects and archives here)
dig?
(consider i'm a little miffed that, once again, i submit a story in a timely manner, holding off on posting until the day of the press conference, and several days later another poster gets the same story posted where mine was rejected. silly me, i thought i had the inside track - being one of the designers of the new ibilio site.. oh well)
:)
the donation did not come from RedHat, as many readers assume. the headline even says the money came from individual investors, which is closer to the mark. reading the full story will reveal that the $4 million donation came from the Red Hat Center (center of what?) which is a "non-profit organization that supports, promotes, and engages in a wide range of initiatives to advance the principles of transparent technology" (Bob Young's term for open source)
the guys from Red Hat started the Center with their own money (acquired from.. duh!) to use in promoting open source projects, even those in competition with RedHat.
RHC has also given big chunks of change (tho none in the $4 million range) to the EFF (electronic fronteirs foundation), probono.net, and the Center for Media Education in Washington, DC
something folks haven't said much about is the plan to make ibiblio more slashdot-like in its sense of community, discussions, and ranking of the content. silly me, i would have thought cmdrtaco would have mentioned that
xdaliclock -cycle &