Just watched the webcast. I for one am glad that it one the award.
Not only did I enjoy it from the artistic side, you really won't believe how well the rendering is done. I'll be checking out the tools for use myself.
Just a note for Alex Conner and like minded folks. You're protesting a non-existent password limitation. Network wise, the limitation is on unique account/user names. Which means that if someone else has the user name you want, you're out of luck. So choose a good nickname, get the password generated by the Slashdot server, then log in. After which you can immediately to your own user account page, edit preferences, and have your password be anything you want. (I think. I didn't try anything obscene.)
The major thrust of your post seems to be about how boomers see the world. While what you are saying could be true, in my mind, the use of stereotype "he's a boomer, ok..." ruins any validition you could otherwise have placed in your arguments.
What is a "boomer" to be precise? Simply someone who was born after the servicemen returned to their native countries after World War II up to roughly 1962. (sorry, I don't have the precise date definition in front of me.)Point by point, I will attempt to negate much of what you said.
"They were _raised_ to believe they were an elite." Sorry, untrue. Most were raised to believe that freedom was something work fighting for, because their fathers (like mine) and mothers sacrificed and went through some degrees of hell to preserve it. Many came back disturbed at the injustices in America and have worked hard to eliminate it. Hence, I dispute the connection between boomers and elitism.
"At least now he's looking beyond the end of his own nose"...which would imply that previously he was not. Connected with the first point, it would imply a self-centeredness as a generational trait which I can tell you from experience, was not there for much of the nation. I remember busloads of men showing up at the site of natural disasters simply because it was the right thing to do. If you have read many of Katz's other articles, you will see a "beyond the nose" viewpoint throughout. This is a common trait to "boomers", by the way, an attitude I found to be many times less common among families who were not reared by wartime vets (many who were same-age friends of mine).
"Makes for a heck of a useful twist on what might otherwise be a gen-X, fear-based sort of story" Again, I dispute your stereotype. Not every gen-x'r would write Katz's article as a fear based sort of story. (IMHO) What the boomers seemed to have more of that many (though not all) of the gen-x writers seem to be lacking is an optimism about the future and how to make a difference in it.
"Sure he's drunk with his own importance-" Buy his book, read it. Discover that Katz genuinely wants to make a positive difference by his writing. Doesn't see himself in a way easily described as "drunk." Way too thoughtful for that.
"but you can't change him or all the Boomers like him, so you might as well at least be happy that he's including us in his little self-celebration..." This is the comment that irked me the most.Three reasons why.
Boomers can change, for better or worse, just like anyone else.
It is not the job of one generation (or person) to change the next. Perhaps to help us see our own excesses or neglects, and use your more youthful energy to help us improve the world perhaps.
(quoting) "his little self-celebration." Please feel free to respond with an explanation as I truly don't see where you were coming from. One of the main points of the article was comparing the community of the original enlightenment to that of the Internet. Community, not self-celebration.
"he could still be extolling authors named Katz" Where did that come from? I notice the wink, but haven't seen Jon extolling himself much. He's as likely to make fun of himself. I do note that he has some justifiable pride in the publishing of his new book. I'd offer you the same right to be proud of your work as I think you should give him.
A final boomer trait, by the way. We allow you to disagree with anything and everything we say, because our fathers fought -- and many saw brothers or close friends die or be maimed defending your right to do so.
...named Rob Malda (A.K.A.CmdrTaco) to Denver, don't you think? [You don't think that he was REALLY going to get much work done those last three days, did you?]
I can't pay the whole ticket but would be glad to put a few bucks into the pot...Under condition that he not be allowed to sleep afterward until he posts a full review.
Naturally, Rob, something longer than "woo hoo" would be deeply appreciated....
This post may be a little bloated for which I apologize -- not enough time to edit this one down. Three main points to offer, with the following preface and background:
(not a brag but to offer perspective) With no speed reading courses whatsoever I was tested at 800+ words per minute (English) with 98% accuracy in fifth grade and still read pretty damn fast and retain MOST of what I read. Which means that often I can burn through a tech book in hours instead of weeks. Now then, here's my main points and two cents worth: ts.
Like most people, I've had to slog through tech books, papers, etc. at maybe 20 wpm, trying to comprehend. Because the topic was more difficult to master? Not usually. (IMHO and IMH Experience) 90% of the time it is because a large number of science types, engineers, and programmers can't write explanatory text worth a fake penny. So point # 1 is that It takes alot less time to pick a good book than it does to slog through a bad one.
It has been proven in many learning studies that retention is primarily a focus of repetition. Which means that the best way to learn something and keep it is essentially a process which looks like this: "READ, review review, review." Which is why I will often burn through three or four well-written "learning" books before buying the inevitable reference tome. BTW, I only use the reference for the tidbits which aren't needed very often.
My belief is that the reason the "_____for Dummies" , the "Teach yourself _____" books, etc. sell so well is because the authors hired by these companies can often explain otherwise difficult concepts easily.
Adding these items together, I would surmise that the problem is probably not your reading, but poor writing by the author(s).From these points I derive my suggestion to the questioner: -- find good authors, friendly tech types you can talk to, and others who can amplify the concepts without the slog. It'll save a whole lot of time and money on speed courses, paying for badly written tech books etc.
Oh, one technique I don't use very often but which I have taught a couple friends that seemed to up their speed and comprehension quite a bit. [it was mentioned also in a previous post] If a person has trouble keeping eye position on a page, their eyes waste alot of time and energy fighting the distraction of the text which they haven't and don't need to read yet. Use a 3x5 card or other straight edge to cover the text below where you are reading. That way the eyes (and brain) only have to process one thought at a time.
So far the main comments on this Thread seem to be Caldera vs. RedHat (I'm sure the other distro fans will chime in soon.) IMHO these comments are worthless because if the interviewee was the CEO of Redhat, we'd get the same kind of comments, just reversing the roles of attackers & defenders.
A reader stands to gain much more useful information if they examine the article this way: the CEO of one of the major Linux Distros is interviewed by one of the more powerful industry magazines and makes the following points:
"...one key area we're focusing in on [is] manageability, security, and identity. Linux does a lot to enable that because of its roots in Unix and remote management."
(responding to a question) "There will definitely be Internet server packages with e-commerce options. There will also be small business packages."
"...you'll see us release a 2.2 kernel on the first of April. One of the key things about 2.2 is that we need it as the platform for our server products that will come out shortly thereafter."
SOme very good discussion about major corporations lookint to replace NT with Linux because the total cost of ownership (including down-time) of NT is too high.
"We're looking to do some real nice things with Java so that you can create a comprehensive SDK [software development kit], if you will, that will allow VARs to easily snap the solutions into that.
Things like SDK's, VARS, and moving existing infrastructure and users to Linux is what this is all about. (Ackowledging that I am deliberately ignoring all of the funky license issues out there) When one Linux distro gains mind share, we all benefit.
In general I say keep him, with the following critique:
This first article suffered from lack of brevity. Although it can be challenging to do so, with some reorganization and editing, my belief is that he probably could have made the same points with about 60% of the words.
In other words (lousy/. pun warning) SLASH out the fat, and keep the thoughts right on the "."
As a previous poster mentioned, this particular Congressman is (unfortunately) one of the more powerful corporate milk-fed political mouths, one that is probably deserving of an early end to his political ambitions.
Unfortunately, I do not live in Louisana, or have any family/friends, etc. who I could call up and have a little influence on. So all I can do is join in this rant, and hope the web makes enough noise to let Tauzin know that he's way off base on this one.
Perhaps we can really use the/. effect in a major way on this: go to the House of Representative's email response page and bring the sucker to it's knees with his name plastered all over it.
Ought to make him real unpopular with 434 other representatives, don't you think?
Notice that I said "most" AC's/ I also note that you didn't use any profanity, didn't play attack freak, or anything else which I would refer to as being 'juvenile'. For which I thank you and to the others, I say, learn from this fellow.
By the way, if you allow your system to receive cookies, you don't have to login. Slashdot is programmed to look for the cookie. A person can always log out and still be AC.
Something like having your cookie or eating it too? (Lame attempt at humor...)
(Note to Rob: I'll admit bias in this because I wouldn't have stuck with Slashdot unless I had seen some of Jon's previous articles.)
I have something to say to the byte-counting flame idiots out there:
If you haven't purchased the book, you wouldn't know that a number of years ago, Diane Sawyer ranked below Katz in signifance in the national media -- she had to ask HIM for what she wanted. 99.99% of you will never know how difficult it is to get a book published in the first place -- Katz has several. But not only does this guy takes the time to work with Rob here on Slashdot, he answers e-mails to people like me he whom he has never met, and he puts his ideas out in front of us for consideration on a regular basis, only to get trashed for the effort.
I paid $14.95 to Amazon for my copy of the book-- so, figuring that most authors get around 10% royalties on their books, then if Katz sold -- hundreds -- of books to Slashdot readers, he's made a few hundred bucks on us at best. But Slashdot could not buy the kind of notice from the big booksellers that Katz brought here for under (and I'll admit this is a guess) $50K-$60.
So here's what I'd like to say, and I don't care how often I get flamed on this thread for saying it: To all you juvenile delinquents in front of keyboards who have nothing better to do than post (mostly anonymous) coward notes attacking Mr. Katz every time he offers thoughts or commentary on Slashdot, I have one thing to say:
Either get yourselves logins, use the new slashdot features to exclude Katz' articles... or shut up, will ya!
(BTW This post is entirely IMHO. (in my humble opinion, for new/.'ees)
This demonstration all about mind share -- something that Microsoft doesn't want Linux to achieve. Let me explain.
For many years, Cray build absolutely the highest performing mainframe number crunching computer in the world -- and every computer scientist knew it. We used to joke about having our own desktop Crays -- if someone would just lend us (in this case) $5.5 million dollars per workstation. So here's the point that IBM was really trying to get across to the corporate IS people out there -- that Linux is competitive with anything Microsoft can produce. Follow the steps:
Take off the shelf hardware. [in this case, IBM NetFinities.
Take a common Linux distribution (RedHat, from the back of a book purchased at Barnes and Noble
Give a set of assumedly talented engineers an EXTREMELY limited period of time (they bought the book ONE day before Linux World) to:
install and configure a set of 17 parallel machines,
set up the network,
install the software,
Tune the installation...
[Note: in my book Just setting up the machines to run in parallel in the time they did is awesome enough!] But IBM specifically to demonstrate to the world that this chose this relatively inexpensive Linux cluster could match the performance of a Cray.
Whether or not it could be done with NT-based machines misses the point.
Although I'm not always a fan of Big Blue, in this case we should all thank them for a great job in once again proving the power of Linux to the rest of the computing world.
but experts out there in/. land, feel free to tell us if & how I'm wrong.
There has for some time been a rule of thumb that adding a second (or third, or 17th) processor to a problem doesn't get you double the performance, because there is overhead deciding "which processor is going to do what."
What this means is that at some point, adding parallel processors to a problem ceases to be cost effective answer.
See my other note on the main thread (this one got submitted first, so be a little patient!!) as to what I think is of greater long-term significance to the Linux world.
Tell you what, AC. You start a company, work for several years to get it going. Then I'll go up on the 'Net and post all sorts of lies and "inside stories." No law against it, so your company starts to lose money.
Hmmm. You say... this ought to be against the law. Coulda shoulda woulda been...
I reiterate one more time: think before you post!!
I try to be nice here on/. I figure it makes Rob's job a little easier. But this post is the most absolutely lame (technically and idealogically) proposition I have read here.
Item #1 has been dealt with: cookies in this case don't offer anything really useful at excluding technically competent AC's from doing (content wise) idiotic posts. Secondarily, if a user's browser doesn't support cookies (correct me if I'm wrong here, people!!), logging in won't help because the user info wouldn't move from page to page.
Here's my own RADICAL PROPOSITION: All Slashdot posters (myself included) should use the 3 pound computer between their ears to consider what it takes to make Slashdot a site worth reading BEFORE mindlessly wasting our time by hitting the submit button with stupid posts. Therefore I would submit that:
Bad-mouthing an individual online is bad karma. What goes around comes around.
Reading other people's posts to avoid lame repetition of other's comments saves all of us time in the long run. Post sparingly.
Suggesting that/. alienate the 80,000,000 or so people who happen to be stuck using a M$ box is not only extreme, but bad for the site as a whole.
Even though Linux is good and getting better, and is already a whole lot better than the opposition in some areas, it's not the only game in town. I am paraphrasing C.S. Lewis (the book Mere Christianity) in saying "we may disagree with others in the house, but our job is to look for ways to work together rather than ways to stand divided." Linux/Slashdot/any software project improves in direct proportion to the number of users who are available to find problems with it. In the meantime, don't piss on the Windows User community. Recruit and train them instead.
Twin + WINE = TWINE... So what? [I'm not being sarcastic here -- I'm honestly wondering. BTW, I have not used WINE or TWIN, so please excuse my ignorance.]
In the TWINE FAQ, in lists the following liabilities to the wine project:
However, Wine has been used primarily for binary emulation. It's Winelib source porting toolkit has often been neglected and lags behind the source porting facilities in TWIN.
Also, Wine has little or no provision for cross platform support. It really only targets x86 Linux machines well.
Later in the FAQ:
Although the Twine project is an open source project, with limited CVS write access, we ask all Twine developers to never modify Wine code within Twine. Instead, we prefer that all work on Wine modules be done directly within the confines of the Wine project. That way, any efforts we make within Twine are immediately shared with the Wine project, and no licenses are violated.
Further, CodeWeavers is retaining all rights to new code written for use in Twine. This means that we will be able to release that code under the Wine license.
Those last two paragraphs case me to hesitate -- what's really free/open source here?
More fundamentally, in terms of the broad Linux movement, wouldn't it make more sense for the majority of us Linux C++ programmers to focus our efforts on creating/finishing a completely OpenSource tool which could port the Win32 API's and the MFC to Linux compatible source code?
Looking in the FAQ for SHELF, I found the following statement:
"Applixware and ELF use a non-standard widget system. Applix widgets are directly layered on Xlib rather than Xt or any other standard widget model. We made this choice in 1989 before Motif 1.0 was available. Our original plan was to use Motif, but the poor performance and lack of reliability of the 1.0 Beta and 1.0 FCS versions caused us to move away from them.
At this time, Applix would be very interested in partnering with developers interested in replacing the widget system with GNOME widgets and/or other standard systems.
Let me preface my remarks with agreement with what appears to me the majority of/. posters -- that the M$ monolith needs to die a swift death. I would also like to state that I have been involved in PC app development since before the Apple had a II after it's name.
Linux wise, I am also not distribution-centric yet. So all of the flame wars between Debian, Slackware, Caldera, RedHat, and SuSe strike me as being alot of wasted use of bandwidth and mindspace. As are the non-stop commentaries about KDE vs. Gnome, Gtk vs. Motif/LessTif.
As a developer, what I want is a clear set of API's and/or published specs which allow me to write and test my code, then point it at a target platform, knowing that as close to 100% as possible of the code will function properly on that target platform.
Which is what the Win32s API, etc. do well (that is, not perfect, but enough to get the work done.) I have written apps in the past that worked without any code changes on platforms from Win3.11 (with the Win32 library), Win95, and WinNT. They even functioned correctly under OS-2/Windows without problem.
I guess what it boils down to is that if the LSB initiative results in a more consistent API across platforms, then I'm all for it.
As was noted in many of yesterday's e-mails, the FCC decision -- on the surface -- does not appear to affect consumers. But as most of the folks who read the FCC statement on the FCC website noted, there are a number of issues left unresolved by the ruling which are why many of us cried FOUL!!!
By analogy, this is sort of like a city saying "we took down the levy by the river because it hasn't flooded in ten years." Follow the progression:
The RBOCs, etc. withdraw from their agreements as they expire, or litigated free from, etc., which cuts the revenue stream to the smaller ILEC.
The ILEC, in order to maintain profitability, (which is, after all why they are in business as well) must pass on the new charges to the ISP.
The ISP, in order to maintain profitability, must pass on those charges to the consumer.
This doesn't even count the fact that most of the big carriers are ISP's in their own right. So the lack of FCC decision opens the door for the smaller ISP's to essentially be squeezed to death by the bigger companies, and invites taxation and litigation at the state level.
Thanks for the e-mail addresses. My guess is that their mail server will die within the hour.
In reading the entire text of the Press Release several unobvious items came to mind. [Please comment if you are reading something different into the texts]. First, it basically left intact whatever agreements had been previously reached between ISP's and phone companies -- regarding the rates they charge each other, or as regulated by state commissions. Which I think means that it preserves alot of the status quo.
Where it seems dangerous is that (quoting) "a state commission, in the exercise of its statutory authority under sections 251 and 252 of the Act to arbitrate interconnection disputes, may have imposed reciprocal compensation obligations for this traffic." And check this out: "Resolution of failures to reach agreement on inter-carrier compensation for interstate ISP-bound traffic then would occur through arbitrations conducted by state commissions, which are appealable to federal district courts.
Just what we need. A bunch of bureaucrats and attorneys haggling over what is essentially the future of the Internet here in the US.
Finally, it also acknowledged that there needs to be a better federal law governing the Internet than the one they are operating under. So it seems to me that aside from the obvious rant to the FCC, we Internet users and all of the ISP's here in the USA really need to concentrate their lobbying efforts and resources on making sure that local public service commissions and Congress do the right thing for the little folks for a change.
Slashdot Mirror
The passwords are VERY case sensitive. Once you log on, you can go to your own account/preferences page and change it to something easier to type.
Make that "won" the award.
Durn English phonetics. I learned Japanese about 20 years ago and my spelling has been haphazard ever since.
Just watched the webcast. I for one am glad that it one the award.
Not only did I enjoy it from the artistic side, you really won't believe how well the rendering is done. I'll be checking out the tools for use myself.
Just a note for Alex Conner and like minded folks. You're protesting a non-existent password limitation. Network wise, the limitation is on unique account/user names. Which means that if someone else has the user name you want, you're out of luck. So choose a good nickname, get the password generated by the Slashdot server, then log in.
After which you can immediately to your own user account page, edit preferences, and have your password be anything you want. (I think. I didn't try anything obscene.)
What is a "boomer" to be precise? Simply someone who was born after the servicemen returned to their native countries after World War II up to roughly 1962. (sorry, I don't have the precise date definition in front of me.)Point by point, I will attempt to negate much of what you said.
- "They were _raised_ to believe they were an elite." Sorry, untrue. Most were raised to believe that freedom was something work fighting for, because their fathers (like mine) and mothers sacrificed and went through some degrees of hell to preserve it. Many came back disturbed at the injustices in America and have worked hard to eliminate it. Hence, I dispute the connection between boomers and elitism.
- "At least now he's looking beyond the end of his own nose"
...which would imply that previously he was not. Connected with the first point, it would imply a self-centeredness as a generational trait which I can tell you from experience, was not there for much of the nation. I remember busloads of men showing up at the site of natural disasters simply because it was the right thing to do. If you have read many of Katz's other articles, you will see a "beyond the nose" viewpoint throughout. This is a common trait to "boomers", by the way, an attitude I found to be many times less common among families who were not reared by wartime vets (many who were same-age friends of mine). - "Makes for a heck of a useful twist on what might otherwise be a gen-X, fear-based sort of story" Again, I dispute your stereotype. Not every gen-x'r would write Katz's article as a fear based sort of story. (IMHO) What the boomers seemed to have more of that many (though not all) of the gen-x writers seem to be lacking is an optimism about the future and how to make a difference in it.
- "Sure he's drunk with his own importance-" Buy his book, read it. Discover that Katz genuinely wants to make a positive difference by his writing. Doesn't see himself in a way easily described as "drunk." Way too thoughtful for that.
- "but you can't change him or all the Boomers like him, so you might as well at least be happy that he's including us in his little self-celebration..." This is the comment that irked me the most.Three reasons why.
- Boomers can change, for better or worse, just like anyone else.
- It is not the job of one generation (or person) to change the next. Perhaps to help us see our own excesses or neglects, and use your more youthful energy to help us improve the world perhaps.
- (quoting) "his little self-celebration." Please feel free to respond with an explanation as I truly don't see where you were coming from. One of the main points of the article was comparing the community of the original enlightenment to that of the Internet. Community, not self-celebration.
- "he could still be extolling authors named Katz" Where did that come from? I notice the wink, but haven't seen Jon extolling himself much. He's as likely to make fun of himself. I do note that he has some justifiable pride in the publishing of his new book. I'd offer you the same right to be proud of your work as I think you should give him.
A final boomer trait, by the way. We allow you to disagree with anything and everything we say, because our fathers fought -- and many saw brothers or close friends die or be maimed defending your right to do so.I can't pay the whole ticket but would be glad to put a few bucks into the pot...Under condition that he not be allowed to sleep afterward until he posts a full review.
Naturally, Rob, something longer than "woo hoo" would be deeply appreciated....
(not a brag but to offer perspective) With no speed reading courses whatsoever I was tested at 800+ words per minute (English) with 98% accuracy in fifth grade and still read pretty damn fast and retain MOST of what I read. Which means that often I can burn through a tech book in hours instead of weeks. Now then, here's my main points and two cents worth: ts.
- Like most people, I've had to slog through tech books, papers, etc. at maybe 20 wpm, trying to comprehend. Because the topic was more difficult to master? Not usually. (IMHO and IMH Experience) 90% of the time it is because a large number of science types, engineers, and programmers can't write explanatory text worth a fake penny. So point # 1 is that It takes alot less time to pick a good book than it does to slog through a bad one.
- It has been proven in many learning studies that retention is primarily a focus of repetition. Which means that the best way to learn something and keep it is essentially a process which looks like this: "READ, review review, review." Which is why I will often burn through three or four well-written "learning" books before buying the inevitable reference tome. BTW, I only use the reference for the tidbits which aren't needed very often.
- My belief is that the reason the "_____for Dummies" , the "Teach yourself _____" books, etc. sell so well is because the authors hired by these companies can often explain otherwise difficult concepts easily.
Adding these items together, I would surmise that the problem is probably not your reading, but poor writing by the author(s).From these points I derive my suggestion to the questioner: -- find good authors, friendly tech types you can talk to, and others who can amplify the concepts without the slog. It'll save a whole lot of time and money on speed courses, paying for badly written tech books etc.Oh, one technique I don't use very often but which I have taught a couple friends that seemed to up their speed and comprehension quite a bit. [it was mentioned also in a previous post] If a person has trouble keeping eye position on a page, their eyes waste alot of time and energy fighting the distraction of the text which they haven't and don't need to read yet. Use a 3x5 card or other straight edge to cover the text below where you are reading. That way the eyes (and brain) only have to process one thought at a time.
A reader stands to gain much more useful information if they examine the article this way: the CEO of one of the major Linux Distros is interviewed by one of the more powerful industry magazines and makes the following points:
- "...one key area we're focusing in on [is] manageability, security, and identity. Linux does a lot to enable that because of its roots in Unix and remote management."
- (responding to a question) "There will definitely be Internet server packages with e-commerce options. There will also be small business packages."
- "...you'll see us release a 2.2 kernel on the first of April. One of the key things about 2.2 is that we need it as the platform for our server products that will come out shortly thereafter."
- SOme very good discussion about major corporations lookint to replace NT with Linux because the total cost of ownership (including down-time) of NT is too high.
- "We're looking to do some real nice things with Java so that you can create a comprehensive SDK [software development kit], if you will, that will allow VARs to easily snap the solutions into that.
Things like SDK's, VARS, and moving existing infrastructure and users to Linux is what this is all about. (Ackowledging that I am deliberately ignoring all of the funky license issues out there) When one Linux distro gains mind share, we all benefit.This first article suffered from lack of brevity. Although it can be challenging to do so, with some reorganization and editing, my belief is that he probably could have made the same points with about 60% of the words.
In other words (lousy /. pun warning) SLASH out the fat, and keep the thoughts right on the "."
Unfortunately, I do not live in Louisana, or have any family/friends, etc. who I could call up and have a little influence on. So all I can do is join in this rant, and hope the web makes enough noise to let Tauzin know that he's way off base on this one.
Perhaps we can really use the /. effect in a major way on this: go to the House of Representative's email response page and bring the sucker to it's knees with his name plastered all over it.
Ought to make him real unpopular with 434 other representatives, don't you think?
This article is too funny. Of course, lawyers might just be a bigger threat to Linux than Microsoft.
Oh... sorry, I forgot. By the time the DOJ gets things wrapped up, the lawyers will be fine. They'll all be working for Microsoft.
Notice that I said "most" AC's/ I also note that you didn't use any profanity, didn't play attack freak, or anything else which I would refer to as being 'juvenile'. For which I thank you and to the others, I say, learn from this fellow.
By the way, if you allow your system to receive cookies, you don't have to login. Slashdot is programmed to look for the cookie. A person can always log out and still be AC.
Something like having your cookie or eating it too? (Lame attempt at humor...)
I have something to say to the byte-counting flame idiots out there:
If you haven't purchased the book, you wouldn't know that a number of years ago, Diane Sawyer ranked below Katz in signifance in the national media -- she had to ask HIM for what she wanted. 99.99% of you will never know how difficult it is to get a book published in the first place -- Katz has several. But not only does this guy takes the time to work with Rob here on Slashdot, he answers e-mails to people like me he whom he has never met, and he puts his ideas out in front of us for consideration on a regular basis, only to get trashed for the effort.
I paid $14.95 to Amazon for my copy of the book-- so, figuring that most authors get around 10% royalties on their books, then if Katz sold -- hundreds -- of books to Slashdot readers, he's made a few hundred bucks on us at best. But Slashdot could not buy the kind of notice from the big booksellers that Katz brought here for under (and I'll admit this is a guess) $50K-$60.
So here's what I'd like to say, and I don't care how often I get flamed on this thread for saying it: To all you juvenile delinquents in front of keyboards who have nothing better to do than post (mostly anonymous) coward notes attacking Mr. Katz every time he offers thoughts or commentary on Slashdot, I have one thing to say:
Either get yourselves logins, use the new slashdot features to exclude Katz' articles... or shut up, will ya!
Advanced warning: this particular mirror is staying extremely busy: its been at the user limit for about ten minutes now.
This demonstration all about mind share -- something that Microsoft doesn't want Linux to achieve. Let me explain.
For many years, Cray build absolutely the highest performing mainframe number crunching computer in the world -- and every computer scientist knew it. We used to joke about having our own desktop Crays -- if someone would just lend us (in this case) $5.5 million dollars per workstation. So here's the point that IBM was really trying to get across to the corporate IS people out there -- that Linux is competitive with anything Microsoft can produce. Follow the steps:
- Take off the shelf hardware. [in this case, IBM NetFinities.
- Take a common Linux distribution (RedHat, from the back of a book purchased at Barnes and Noble
- Give a set of assumedly talented engineers an EXTREMELY limited period of time (they bought the book ONE day before Linux World) to:
- install and configure a set of 17 parallel machines,
- set up the network,
- install the software,
- Tune the installation...
[Note: in my book Just setting up the machines to run in parallel in the time they did is awesome enough!] But IBM specifically to demonstrate to the world that this chose this relatively inexpensive Linux cluster could match the performance of a Cray.Whether or not it could be done with NT-based machines misses the point.
Although I'm not always a fan of Big Blue, in this case we should all thank them for a great job in once again proving the power of Linux to the rest of the computing world.
Take that, Microsoft!!
There has for some time been a rule of thumb that adding a second (or third, or 17th) processor to a problem doesn't get you double the performance, because there is overhead deciding "which processor is going to do what."
What this means is that at some point, adding parallel processors to a problem ceases to be cost effective answer.
See my other note on the main thread (this one got submitted first, so be a little patient!!) as to what I think is of greater long-term significance to the Linux world.
Makes sense. Thanks for the clarifications.
Tell you what, AC. You start a company, work for several years to get it going. Then I'll go up on the 'Net and post all sorts of lies and "inside stories." No law against it, so your company starts to lose money.
Hmmm. You say... this ought to be against the law. Coulda shoulda woulda been...
I reiterate one more time: think before you post!!
Item #1 has been dealt with: cookies in this case don't offer anything really useful at excluding technically competent AC's from doing (content wise) idiotic posts. Secondarily, if a user's browser doesn't support cookies (correct me if I'm wrong here, people!!), logging in won't help because the user info wouldn't move from page to page.
Here's my own RADICAL PROPOSITION: All Slashdot posters (myself included) should use the 3 pound computer between their ears to consider what it takes to make Slashdot a site worth reading BEFORE mindlessly wasting our time by hitting the submit button with stupid posts. Therefore I would submit that:
- First Poster comments are worthless.
- Expletive laden comments aren't worth reading either.
- Bad-mouthing an individual online is bad karma. What goes around comes around.
- Reading other people's posts to avoid lame repetition of other's comments saves all of us time in the long run. Post sparingly.
- Suggesting that
/. alienate the 80,000,000 or so people who happen to be stuck using a M$ box is not only extreme, but bad for the site as a whole.
Even though Linux is good and getting better, and is already a whole lot better than the opposition in some areas, it's not the only game in town. I am paraphrasing C.S. Lewis (the book Mere Christianity) in saying "we may disagree with others in the house, but our job is to look for ways to work together rather than ways to stand divided." Linux/Slashdot/any software project improves in direct proportion to the number of users who are available to find problems with it. In the meantime, don't piss on the Windows User community. Recruit and train them instead.In the TWINE FAQ, in lists the following liabilities to the wine project:
Later in the FAQ:
- Although the Twine project is an open source project, with limited CVS write access, we ask all Twine developers to never modify Wine code within Twine. Instead, we prefer that all work on Wine modules be done directly within the confines of the Wine project. That way, any efforts we make within Twine are immediately shared with the Wine project, and no licenses are violated.
- Further, CodeWeavers is retaining all rights to new code written for use in Twine. This means that we will be able to release that code under the Wine license.
Those last two paragraphs case me to hesitate -- what's really free/open source here?More fundamentally, in terms of the broad Linux movement, wouldn't it make more sense for the majority of us Linux C++ programmers to focus our efforts on creating/finishing a completely OpenSource tool which could port the Win32 API's and the MFC to Linux compatible source code?
"Applixware and ELF use a non-standard widget system. Applix widgets are directly layered on Xlib rather than Xt or any other standard widget model. We made this choice in 1989 before Motif 1.0 was available. Our original plan was to use Motif, but the poor performance and lack of reliability of the 1.0 Beta and 1.0 FCS versions caused us to move away from them.
At this time, Applix would be very interested in partnering with developers interested in replacing the widget system with GNOME widgets and/or other standard systems.
If interested, you can click here and send them an e-mail message.
While I acknowledge that this is an older posting now, I hope a few folks out there will read it.
I just finished Katz's book. Here's my thoughts:
1. Go buy it.
2. Read from it.
3. Enjoy it.
4. Learn something from it.
'Twas an A+ read from someone who generally only gives C-'s.
Linux wise, I am also not distribution-centric yet. So all of the flame wars between Debian, Slackware, Caldera, RedHat, and SuSe strike me as being alot of wasted use of bandwidth and mindspace. As are the non-stop commentaries about KDE vs. Gnome, Gtk vs. Motif/LessTif.
As a developer, what I want is a clear set of API's and/or published specs which allow me to write and test my code, then point it at a target platform, knowing that as close to 100% as possible of the code will function properly on that target platform.
Which is what the Win32s API, etc. do well (that is, not perfect, but enough to get the work done.) I have written apps in the past that worked without any code changes on platforms from Win3.11 (with the Win32 library), Win95, and WinNT. They even functioned correctly under OS-2/Windows without problem.
I guess what it boils down to is that if the LSB initiative results in a more consistent API across platforms, then I'm all for it.
By analogy, this is sort of like a city saying "we took down the levy by the river because it hasn't flooded in ten years."
Follow the progression:
This doesn't even count the fact that most of the big carriers are ISP's in their own right. So the lack of FCC decision opens the door for the smaller ISP's to essentially be squeezed to death by the bigger companies, and invites taxation and litigation at the state level.
Cry foul, and keep crying!
In reading the entire text of the Press Release several unobvious items came to mind. [Please comment if you are reading something different into the texts]. First, it basically left intact whatever agreements had been previously reached between ISP's and phone companies -- regarding the rates they charge each other, or as regulated by state commissions. Which I think means that it preserves alot of the status quo.
Where it seems dangerous is that (quoting) "a state commission, in the exercise of its statutory authority under sections 251 and 252 of the Act to arbitrate interconnection disputes, may have imposed reciprocal compensation obligations for this traffic." And check this out: "Resolution of failures to reach agreement on inter-carrier compensation for interstate ISP-bound traffic then would occur through arbitrations conducted by state commissions, which are appealable to federal district courts.
Just what we need. A bunch of bureaucrats and attorneys haggling over what is essentially the future of the Internet here in the US.
Finally, it also acknowledged that there needs to be a better federal law governing the Internet than the one they are operating under. So it seems to me that aside from the obvious rant to the FCC, we Internet users and all of the ISP's here in the USA really need to concentrate their lobbying efforts and resources on making sure that local public service commissions and Congress do the right thing for the little folks for a change.
Let's all work this one to death, folks.