If you rent a DIVX, but end up doing something else that night, you can't just watch it the next day, you would have to wait on line at the rental place all over again.
Being able to hold on to a tape/dvd for an extra day (for a few extra bucks) is convenient. It's not worth sacrificing this option to eliminate returns.
Dropping off the movie is almost effortless- most rental places have a drive by drop box so you can return it on your way to work, etc.
Re:What is the relevance of FreeBSD today?
on
FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE
·
· Score: 1
er, i meant to say- if you like linux!
oh and yes that last line is an open invitation to get my ass proved wrong. Which is fine, I love BSD and I want it to be better:-)
-pete
Re:What is the relevance of FreeBSD today?
on
FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE
·
· Score: 1
This is already happening, in a way.
To combine the best features of A and B you don't necessarily have to merge the projects. When an especially good component comes out for BSD, it will probably get included or cloned for the linux distros, and vice versa. Open source makes this trivial. There are some details- due to BSD vs GPL licensing, stuff might end up in "contrib" rather than the core, but that doesn't affect functionality.
The only differences left are the BSD/GPL licenses themselves (a timeless debate), and the "architecture"... which is becoming more flexible- more stuff can go in loadable kernel modules, etc.
so what's left?
package management and configuration? Personally I think BSD wins on configuration, 90% of the stuff you end up changing is in/etc/rc.conf
as for package management, I think its a tossup- apt-get Foo vs cd/usr/ports/Foo/Bar && make install
ALSO, FreeBSD runs linux binaries, it has a linux compatibility layer, and I'm pretty sure you can use rpm and apt on on BSD. So if you like it on linux, odds are it'll work right away on BSD.
I've been using FreeBSD since 3.3. At the time, on some rare occasions, a package wouldn't work and you'd have to spend like 10-15 minutes fixing something trivial to make it run or build. I have had zero problems in this department since FreeBSD 4.1,
CONCLUSION: if you want the best* free unix, get FreeBSD! But if you like unix, it'll be, for the most part, just as good.
anything MS can do to encourage just the USE of MS software anywhere in the world is incredibly valuable.
Giving MS sftwr away in countries where they wouldnt make money anyway reduces demand for linux there.
by taking market share away from linux, it reduces the "network effect" for linux worldwide, slowing down linux's development worldwide, and buying time for MS's dominance -> $$$$
The core team is 10-15 people who arent even full time! wow:-)
A lot of companies are realizing (or should realize), though, that its a great deal to pay one of their employees (or contract out) to take an OSS project which is almost-right-for-them, and add the last 10% of missing functionality, etc. If they play their cards right, their one developer can leverage all the volunteer expertise out there and work with a huge part-time team backing him.
This can be better than paying for 100% of a commercial alternative.
Thus, many of the more focused OSS developers are actually on someone's payroll.
Think about television. Back in the day you would have to mess with the settings- horizontal hold, vertical hold etc. Now TV's are idiot-proof, they autodetect everything.
I find this hard to belive. completely changing the core of their business (for the biggest strongest longest running most familiar name in IT)? I doubt they would do such a thing.
After all, you can make excellent hardware and software and patent it, you cant patent the collective wisdom/experience of your service-providing workforce. If there is something that is truly "commodity" it is technicians/engineers.
A strategy of centering around providing generic IT service would surely lead to diultion of all things that make IBM good- in a few years, the IBM brand name would mean nothing.
thats why you get your IT outsourcing contract negotiated by a specialized "IT outsourcing contract negotiation consultant", who know the business and know when you're getting the standard deal vs when youre gonna get ripped off.
i.e., you outsource the process of picking who to outsource your IT to:-)
That $1K/month is monopoly money, i.e. it does not leave the company.
Wrong. That $1k per month is the only revenue for the IT department. it pays for the server, the staff, management, overhead etc.
Of course we notice that they are operating inefficiently ($1K per month per server?!). Here is why: The IT department has a MONOPOLY on delivering IT services to the company. Monopoly = inefficiency. More specifically, your IT needs better quality control (or whatever you call it).
this is why outsourcing is good- introduces competition, get a lowest bidder, (instead of having your QC department eat $1K per month per server to keep your IT costs down)
true - to a point. The benefit of outsourcing is that you get a standard cost associated with a standard service / product, instead of the unpredictability of going into the business of doing something other than what your company's competency is.
BUT- there are issues of integration- integrating your tech into your business, making those shiny gigahertz boxes do something useful, for example. Outsourcing goes wrong when this falls between the cracks.
When does this happen? when requirements are not 100% clear. When are requirements not 100% clear? a lot of times. a lot of times people dont know, or they know on some intuitive level (defined as experience with a company), and the effort was not put in to formalize / document these things.
Well, by "everyone" they meant other developers. If there is one repository, the whole project might not build until the 5 developers get their 5 sets pf patches straightened out....
You're probably right in tthat the 5 developers could have their own branch, which would then be mereged back when its ready. I'm actually not too familiar with the branching on CVS so I don't know if that's a good way of working things.
I looked over their website and the feature that struck me was having "sub-repositories"... i dont remember what the actual name for them is.
the idea is that if you have 50 developers, and 5 of them are working on a section of the tree, they can merge each others related work amongst themselves (in their own sub-repository) before commiting to the "master" repository, at which point everyone sees their changes.
As for the distributed nature of bitkeeper, blah blah blah. It doesnt seem like such a big deal. Stick your repository in a database, if you need scalability buy a database that can scale.
Invest a billion or two of the dollars you have lying around into developing a good, non-dangerous brain-computer interface. Then you can deliver digital content directly to our minds, with no worries about it getting stolen along the way!
yeah, think its funy?
Take a look at these guys! They have a test group of patients (who happen to be blind but thats beside the point)
they stuck wires into their heads. (actually, I think they built some kind of multi-pin connector into their skulls so that the cable is detatchable, which is kind-of creepy but cool).
So far, they were able to feed extremely low-resolution video DIRECTLY INTO THE PATIENTS HEAD... apparently one of the formerly blind patients was able to perform some limited maneuvers in a car! (on private property)
The problem with that method of copying, though, is that it is just horribly inefficient for any kind of routine use. You would have to dedicate a substantial portion of your time to this, as it would be difficult to automate, thus meaning that the DRM stuff is, for most purposes, effective.
Nonsense.
To take good pictures of a monitor... is easy. set up your camera on a tripod in front of monitor. turn off room lights, set exposure time etc.
Get a digital camera with an electronic trigger.
Plug USB WIRE from camera into computer. Now you can instantly read the files on drive F.
Have a trivial Visual Basic Application "SendKeys" to the reader software to advance the pages.
The same application sends the trigger signal to the camera every time a new page comes up.
now you have a bunch of high-resolution images, the rest is just as easy.
heres some advice: build your project so that you can take advantage of CODE REUSE- even if you think you can do it better, you can always do it better later. dont reinvent 100% of the wheel, only reinvent the parts that interest you.
its only a matter of time until genetic engineering technology comes to market. then we will have asexual reproduction, and the world will be ours!!!:-)
Why don't they just sedate us and put us in little pods for the flight. Less of my rights would be violated that way and at least that would be more effective
Hmm you might have something there. I'm surprised noone thought of it, it would pretty much guarantee that theres no passenger-caused funny business (unless they eat a bomb and have it go off from their stomach or something...)
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Violence is the last refuge of pretty much everyone. Therefore, pretty much everyone is incompetent. Sounds about right to me...
hehe... i guess we're gonna live in a violent world
but I was being serious-
what about a "competent person" who through no fault of his own is trapped in a corner... or are you incompetent if you get into a situation you cannot control?
Some people are just plain psycho, but many get violent because they see no way out. Addressing violence directly might not be sufficient, we must also address the cause of the violence (i.e., what created the desperate situation which caused the violence in the first place)
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the real reason DIVX flopped is this-
If you rent a DIVX, but end up doing something else that night, you can't just watch it the next day, you would have to wait on line at the rental place all over again.
Being able to hold on to a tape/dvd for an extra day (for a few extra bucks) is convenient. It's not worth sacrificing this option to eliminate returns.
Dropping off the movie is almost effortless- most rental places have a drive by drop box so you can return it on your way to work, etc.
er, i meant to say- if you like linux!
:-)
oh and yes that last line is an open invitation to get my ass proved wrong. Which is fine, I love BSD and I want it to be better
-pete
This is already happening, in a way.
/etc/rc.conf
/usr/ports/Foo/Bar && make install
To combine the best features of A and B you don't necessarily have to merge the projects. When an especially good component comes out for BSD, it will probably get included or cloned for the linux distros, and vice versa. Open source makes this trivial. There are some details- due to BSD vs GPL licensing, stuff might end up in "contrib" rather than the core, but that doesn't affect functionality.
The only differences left are the BSD/GPL licenses themselves (a timeless debate), and the "architecture"... which is becoming more flexible- more stuff can go in loadable kernel modules, etc.
so what's left?
package management and configuration? Personally I think BSD wins on configuration, 90% of the stuff you end up changing is in
as for package management, I think its a tossup- apt-get Foo
vs
cd
ALSO, FreeBSD runs linux binaries, it has a linux compatibility layer, and I'm pretty sure you can use rpm and apt on on BSD. So if you like it on linux, odds are it'll work right away on BSD.
I've been using FreeBSD since 3.3. At the time, on some rare occasions, a package wouldn't work and you'd have to spend like 10-15 minutes fixing something trivial to make it run or build. I have had zero problems in this department since FreeBSD 4.1,
CONCLUSION: if you want the best* free unix, get FreeBSD! But if you like unix, it'll be, for the most part, just as good.
* - i'm not really talking about the best desktop
wow!
what are you photographing with that beastie?
hmm suure
anything MS can do to encourage just the USE of MS software anywhere in the world is incredibly valuable.
Giving MS sftwr away in countries where they wouldnt make money anyway reduces demand for linux there.
by taking market share away from linux, it reduces the "network effect" for linux worldwide, slowing down linux's development worldwide, and buying time for MS's dominance -> $$$$
holy cow, thats messed up
actually thats an interesting observation.
:-)
The core team is 10-15 people who arent even full time! wow
A lot of companies are realizing (or should realize), though, that its a great deal to pay one of their employees (or contract out) to take an OSS project which is almost-right-for-them, and add the last 10% of missing functionality, etc. If they play their cards right, their one developer can leverage all the volunteer expertise out there and work with a huge part-time team backing him.
This can be better than paying for 100% of a commercial alternative.
Thus, many of the more focused OSS developers are actually on someone's payroll.
-peter
I dunno
Think about television. Back in the day you would have to mess with the settings- horizontal hold, vertical hold etc. Now TV's are idiot-proof, they autodetect everything.
sweet, theres gonna be another IT/telecom bubble :-)
I find this hard to belive. completely changing the core of their business (for the biggest strongest longest running most familiar name in IT)? I doubt they would do such a thing.
After all, you can make excellent hardware and software and patent it, you cant patent the collective wisdom/experience of your service-providing workforce. If there is something that is truly "commodity" it is technicians/engineers.
A strategy of centering around providing generic IT service would surely lead to diultion of all things that make IBM good- in a few years, the IBM brand name would mean nothing.
actually I think it makes it read more like spoken english, makes it flow more naturally
:-)
(which might be a cover-up tactic to compensate for BS content)
but it does make him sound like someone who can write nicely
Lesson learned: start planning to transition out of the IT business about 5 years into it probably right around when you're getting really good.
The ultimate irony, since we're supposedly seeing such specialization these days.
hehe
:-)
thats why you get your IT outsourcing contract negotiated by a specialized "IT outsourcing contract negotiation consultant", who know the business and know when you're getting the standard deal vs when youre gonna get ripped off.
i.e., you outsource the process of picking who to outsource your IT to
That $1K/month is monopoly money, i.e. it does not leave the company.
Wrong. That $1k per month is the only revenue for the IT department. it pays for the server, the staff, management, overhead etc.
Of course we notice that they are operating inefficiently ($1K per month per server?!). Here is why: The IT department has a MONOPOLY on delivering IT services to the company. Monopoly = inefficiency. More specifically, your IT needs better quality control (or whatever you call it).
this is why outsourcing is good- introduces competition, get a lowest bidder, (instead of having your QC department eat $1K per month per server to keep your IT costs down)
Outsourcing is efficient and necessary.
true - to a point. The benefit of outsourcing is that you get a standard cost associated with a standard service / product, instead of the unpredictability of going into the business of doing something other than what your company's competency is.
BUT- there are issues of integration- integrating your tech into your business, making those shiny gigahertz boxes do something useful, for example. Outsourcing goes wrong when this falls between the cracks.
When does this happen? when requirements are not 100% clear. When are requirements not 100% clear? a lot of times. a lot of times people dont know, or they know on some intuitive level (defined as experience with a company), and the effort was not put in to formalize / document these things.
i.e., the real world aint that simple
Well, by "everyone" they meant other developers. If there is one repository, the whole project might not build until the 5 developers get their 5 sets pf patches straightened out....
You're probably right in tthat the 5 developers could have their own branch, which would then be mereged back when its ready. I'm actually not too familiar with the branching on CVS so I don't know if that's a good way of working things.
Bitkeeper does look pretty sweet though.
I looked over their website and the feature that struck me was having "sub-repositories"... i dont remember what the actual name for them is.
the idea is that if you have 50 developers, and 5 of them are working on a section of the tree, they can merge each others related work amongst themselves (in their own sub-repository) before commiting to the "master" repository, at which point everyone sees their changes.
As for the distributed nature of bitkeeper, blah blah blah. It doesnt seem like such a big deal. Stick your repository in a database, if you need scalability buy a database that can scale.
Invest a billion or two of the dollars you have lying around into developing a good, non-dangerous brain-computer interface. Then you can deliver digital content directly to our minds, with no worries about it getting stolen along the way!
yeah, think its funy?
Take a look at these guys! They have a test group of patients (who happen to be blind but thats beside the point)
they stuck wires into their heads. (actually, I think they built some kind of multi-pin connector into their skulls so that the cable is detatchable, which is kind-of creepy but cool).
So far, they were able to feed extremely low-resolution video DIRECTLY INTO THE PATIENTS HEAD... apparently one of the formerly blind patients was able to perform some limited maneuvers in a car! (on private property)
here is some videos from the same place.
Pretty sweet, if you ask me, but brings up LOTS of interesting thoughts. Imagine where this technology could be 20 years from now!
The problem with that method of copying, though, is that it is just horribly inefficient for any kind of routine use. You would have to dedicate a substantial portion of your time to this, as it would be difficult to automate, thus meaning that the DRM stuff is, for most purposes, effective.
Nonsense.
To take good pictures of a monitor... is easy. set up your camera on a tripod in front of monitor. turn off room lights, set exposure time etc.
Get a digital camera with an electronic trigger.
Plug USB WIRE from camera into computer. Now you can instantly read the files on drive F.
Have a trivial Visual Basic Application "SendKeys" to the reader software to advance the pages.
The same application sends the trigger signal to the camera every time a new page comes up.
now you have a bunch of high-resolution images, the rest is just as easy.
heres some advice: build your project so that you can take advantage of CODE REUSE- even if you think you can do it better, you can always do it better later. dont reinvent 100% of the wheel, only reinvent the parts that interest you.
-pete
Well, star wars was better until Lucas f*cked it up
its only a matter of time until genetic engineering technology comes to market. then we will have asexual reproduction, and the world will be ours!!! :-)
Why don't they just sedate us and put us in little pods for the flight. Less of my rights would be violated that way and at least that would be more effective
Hmm you might have something there. I'm surprised noone thought of it, it would pretty much guarantee that theres no passenger-caused funny business (unless they eat a bomb and have it go off from their stomach or something...)
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Violence is the last refuge of pretty much everyone.
Therefore, pretty much everyone is incompetent. Sounds about right to me...
hehe... i guess we're gonna live in a violent world
but I was being serious-
what about a "competent person" who through no fault of his own is trapped in a corner... or are you incompetent if you get into a situation you cannot control?
Some people are just plain psycho, but many get violent because they see no way out. Addressing violence directly might not be sufficient, we must also address the cause of the violence (i.e., what created the desperate situation which caused the violence in the first place)
what about the "american taliban"?? he's supposed to be a US citizen, no?