We have a similiar problem here (testing CD-ROMs, therefore we need any combination of e.g. winxx+servicepackyy+internetexplorerzz+with/withou t quicktime installed) What I did was setting up a seperate linux partition and a boot-menu, allowing you to restore previously done disk images of the systems. Much faster than reinstalling and _guarantees_ the exact same configuration you started this. Wouldn't that make your job easier (the 6 month reinstall cycle)?
Ordinarily I'd gladly take a photo of a couple, but these photos are meaningless.
Muahaha, I see something coming. "Hello Mister Miller, you bought the Sony Ericsson's T68i last week, how are your first impressions?" "Bad, really bad. I just returned it to the shop. Everywhere I went to with the phone, people were mad at me for being a "Sony con". One man even threatened to knock me up, just because I wanted him to take a picture from my wife and me."
It's worse. Crossing the line will open pandora's box. I think this ISP's are stupid, because they begin a fight carrier vs. content. And as expensive it may be to do a carrier's work, to lay cables etc., I think our world is rapidly developing into a "carrier overhead" or a "content scarcity", if you compare the relative value. Extreme example, there's only one CNN, but there's a plethora of access providers making it possible for their users to reach CNN's website. I don't want to discuss the quality or whatever of CNN, but only the relative importance of _one_ content provider vs. carriers.
These access providers should fear that content providers turn the table and demand charging access providers for opening their sites for users. AOL/Time Warner is one of the first I could see trying such a stunt.
Wasn't the "badness" of that movie the whole idea?
It's really amazing how this movie seperates people. Yes I'm also quite sure that this movie did indeed use some form of "badness" to get a message across. But I'm also still trying to find out what differentiates others and me from the people who don't think that.
it just shows one of the most successfull managers of today praising linux.
I first didn't really get how this citation should express what you read into it. Now I think I got it, you mean cheap vs. free. No, I'm quite sure Mr. Ballmer knew exactly what he was talking about when he said free.
Yeah, they did an interpretation not an advancement, at least I really doubt EL&P would have the guts to call it an advancement.
While many of your friends would have called it a straight improvement, IMO this is only acceptable in the sense of "a interpretation which fits my taster better". Many others would not say it's an improvement.
Contrast that to the example linux 0.99 vs linux 2.4.18. Is there really anyone saying that 2.4.18 isn't an improvement, even in the original meaning of the word "improvement"?
Hmm... maybe it was just too long ago, and you kids can't remember anything before rap.
Heh, let's get that outta way, my UID is lower and I know at least one other big adaption of EL&P of a quite well known classical piece, which is btw. older IIRC.;-)
Because, contrary to the development of music, open source development is directed, it's directed in a sense the evolution was at least directed one point in time.
You can't say "Beatles are better than American Jazz", but you can say "linux 2.4.18 is better than linux 0.9.9". No matter where you look, open source developement is directed, with only small perturbations.
Can we really say that of music? Where is the uber-musician, standing on the shoulders of giants like Mozart and Bach, creating things they never have dreamed of? Noel Gallagher? (amusing little on-topic sidestep)
And that's why I think that the "development" in music is not comparable to that in software, the benefit from copying (in a non-negative sense) is much more untangible, therefore less profitable, and in consequence of less value.
It's a complex theme, I for one would say that using themes from one musical work in another is not the same as using apache 1.3.18 to make apache 1.3.19. OTOH there is the application server zope, which uses a python webserver named medusa to serve its content. They incorporated it, similary to what happens in music sometimes, but not in the same way. So, there are no hard borders, but I don't see anything in music which is analogous to apache 1.3.18 -> 1.3.19.
But let's take a short trip to reality;-).
My point still stands that despite Toccata & Fugue being open source, the world still waits for the 1.1. version;-). And, by the way, there already are certain exceptions in copyrights concerning art, they even extend to trademarks, which at least are allowed to be "violated" by satire.
I think you should differentiate two factors here:
- Obsolescence of classical distribution channels
This is indeed the problem of big media corporations and covers the distribution of the good itself and marketing logistics. The importance of both of them has suffered quite a bit since the internet emerged. I venture a guess the the biggest fear of big media might be not the fact that people can copy and distribute their stuff, but that artist in the long term will loose their dependence on a company to get their stuff to the people.
- Collaborative work on an open source product (whatever it may be).
I think the latter mainly will affect software production, because the process of creating "art" does not inherently profit from collaboration. Would Bach's work really be any better if he had done it with a couple of fellows over the internet? Would it really improve if someone took it and came out with Toccata & Fuge 1.1? This would be possible today, because there is no copyright etc. on Bachs work, but nobody seems to think it's a good idea.
Nice theory, but wrong IMO. You have to look very closely at the differences of, let's call it "Physical World Communism" (PWB) vs. "Software Communism" (SC), where the latter shall be a crude way of naming the communistic elements you and your parent poster linked to open source ideas. We'll accept the word communism, while I think marxism would be more appropriate.
"So people tend to press everything they can out from a system that allows them to do it while trying to contribute as less as possible."
In PWC, this is a very real problem and is perhaps indeed the main point why such systems won't fly. The effect is that "bad" people consume more resources than they create, taking from the resource pool and shortening resources also of the people who create more than they consume, therefore accelerating the effect of people getting "bad". IIRC there are classical examples from game theory/psychology for that.
OTOH, in SC, it is not so simple to define resources. At least not a resources with the property that you can reduce resources by taking them from the pool. The closest thing that I can think of is "developer time", but the trick is the this resource doesn't follow communistic ideas, it strongly follows the ideas of individuality. Examples are project forks, developers dropping out of projects, etc. - things that happen daily in open source. Usage of OS software doesn't reduce any resources of SC, therefore most freeriders in this "software communism" scheme do _not_ hurt the system.
Now we can look more closely at the resource "developer time", and this is IMO where the differences between BSD-style licenses and GPL come into play. BSD-style licenses are in danger of resource exhaustion because a proprietary fork might "steal" mind-share and therefore indeed reduce said resource, but most projects using such license rightly seem not to be concerned about that. The problem gets worse if there is more then one party involved which could profit or profits from proprietary derivatives from an BSD-licensed project, because all of a sudden there exists a new resource pool (income by selling the product) which makes it attractive to withhold from sharing resources. An example for this can be easily found on your favorite ews site.
The way which GPL tries to resolve those problems is known, and looking at the sheer number of competing companies contributing to linux suggests that it may be quite successful.
Oh, and btw., it is not suprising that something like OSS has emerged, IMO it is the best existant model for something like software, where resources are set up like I described above. What I find suprising is that one must always explain that it is the best, although nearly the same model is used in sciences/engineering very successful since their existance.
If there's anything MS could do which would not directly thrown out of a court - and most certainly patent infringement allegations wouldn't - someone would end up in court with them. Sadly, the extreme financial risks associated with that are enough for most people to not consider something like trying to invalidate said patents. Therefore, as weak as their patents might be in our eyes, the fact that MS might have them is a very real danger.
Don't want to nitpick, in fact, I don't even know if Fyodor released a policy for disclosure, but an often mentioned document is rain forest puppies' full disclosure policy
If they believe they just need to shell out 75 million dollars for a stinking mailing list in order to contral an important part of the world's infrastructure, they are idiots. Getting something to work like bugtraq technically is absolutely no problem. A mailing list with 30000 subscribers, ok let it be 300000, isn't voodoo. The "selling point" of bugtraq is/was the trust many people have in them, the people which post there, their policy. If anything would cause people to mistrust them, it needs just one trusted guy from the security community to start a new list, and bugtraq is dead. I've even read a post that one alternative has already started. If someone like Dan Farmer, Wietse Venema or, for the hell of it, Bruce Schneier decided to start a bugtraq clone, the original would not stand a chance if its reputation had already been damaged.
Re:Now, if only Google would support regexp search
on
Next Generation Regexp
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· Score: 2
Well, maybe they thought about it. But if they only implement a (non-trivial) subset of regexp search I will admire them even more. Regexp are horrible from a complexity point of view. According to this link regepx's complexity is of O(M*N), where M unfortunately is in the order of Googles DB, if my short calculation is correct. Note, this may be wrong, but the point stays that regexp searching is quite expensive and kills most of the optimizations you could do if you didn't want to provide them.
[talk about regexps are not so usefull..., but...] What has become useful is what Google [google.com] taps into. And that is the human aspect. Data isn't important because it matches a*(b|c)a*. It's important because it is useful to people. Think about it: when you are looking for wares or porn, where do you go? Perl? Nope. IRC. Why? Because of the human element.
I understand your thinking. But your thinking is wrong. Think about it (no pun intended). How much better would google be if one could use regexps in one's search request. regexp and datamining are orthogonal.
Wow, after completing my answer I see it has gotten quite large. I think this is because one seldom has a chance to talk to a non-fanatical Apple "zealot";-).
Anyways, your reply was nicely worded and reflected compared to most rabid linux-zealots that trawls these boards.
Hey, it takes some goodwill to take that as a compliment;-).
From my POV the only thing keeping linux-users from switching is the reluctancy against actually paying for quality - or anything at all really.
Hmm, methinks this is not only the case with linux users. Thats why I talked about warezing as an important factor for the MS market share. And this, I hope, will get people considering alternatives, since warezing gets harder and harder for the average guy. Be it Apple, *nixes, Atheos, OpenBeos. Apples problem here is that they will have a hard time competing, and ironically it may be the availability of Microsoft apps which are one of the strongest argument for people trying a Mac instead of other alternatives. You may have a different opinion, but I think since most people are "tainted" with and therefore used to one kind of GUI, the cost of learning an other way of working with a computer (OS X) outweighs the benefits of that way probably being better. But since Apple has the office apps people are used to, and which promise interoperability...
Couple that with an irrational hatred of Apple (Judging a company on it's port for the "enemy"-OS? Do you think MS helps them smooth their experience and general acceptance there?) and you have a bunch of stubborn woodheads.
Are you talking about me judging apple from Quicktime/Win32? If yes, being as intrusive as Quicktime is on windows (e.g. non-deinstallable, I mentioned other quirks) has surely nothing to do with specific problems of porting. No, it's an area where apple had some kind of monopoly, and it shows. It's silly, and I for one prefer not to install quicktime on some machines I use, sorry apple.
I would feel the same way too. If it suddenly dawned on me that Windows or even Linux were way ahead of the Mac OS in the race. That just isn't the case now.
But how do you define "being ahead of the race"? OS X just doesn't have many problems linux and windows suffer from, so it makes no sense to e.g. include driver problems, installation problems or ease of hardware installation into this definition. What remains is a purported advantage from OS X in the UI, and as I said above, that is not enough for people to change, esp. considering how much one had to invest in order to change to a Mac. Are there other clear advantages of OS X?
Don't get me wrong. Both have their uses. Linux is a great server OS. Reliable and low-maintenance. But for a desktop? I'll give it a few years to iron out it's wrinkles and uglies. I don't hold my breath though
It will be relativly easy for KDE/Gnome to get "good enough", they did and are still making major inroads, and once a foundation is laid, i.e. critical user/developer mass is reached, nearly every OSS project has proven that it slowly but surely is able to rival commercial offering. It's just much harder to build this critical mass in areas like window manager and desktop environments etc. For instance, look how long it has taken apple to advance from the old MacOS, or how long MS needed to get win95 out of the door, it's hard for the proprietary side, too. Nowadays, there seems not to be much room left for major advances, so OSS GUIs don't need to chase a fast moving target anymore. Btw. is there anything known what apple plans for an OS X successor?
And Windows? Well, it's shaping up. But it has been a long time now. Constantly playing catch up with the Mac OS has worn it out like an old piece of cloth. Security-holes and bugs abound. I don't blame them though. Being that paranoid, controlling and the same time have to support an enormous plethora of configurations must strain them to a breaking point.
Oh, there I can't follow you. IMO, MS was quite ahead of Apple before OS X. You know, preemptive multitasking and that modern stuff which OS X brought you;-). With all its problems, Win NT was far more advanced than MacOS. And about playing catchup, if MS succeeds with.NET (which I hope they don't), you'll see Apple playing catchup, badly. See for instance this article for some point about how Apple is dependent on MS, at least IMO concerning the typical iMac customers. I think it just takes a couple of strategic decisions from MS and Apple's market might shrink about 50% within one or two years - we'll see.
Linux on the other hand is the perfect hobbyist OS. Perfect for the tinkerer.
This contradicts what you said about linux as a server os. Taking into account the whole picture, i.e. supported hardware plattforms, market share, application software, upward/downward scalability and number/strength of industrial adopters, one must conclude that there are not many operating system which can hold a candle as a server OS to linux. You hardly can call this a typical hobbyist plattform - though I wish it were:). And this is a solid basis for a future desktop OS, methinks. Do you think if Apple had used linux for OS X's *nix personality instead of BSD it had changed much?
Mac OS X is the perfect combination for everyone. A tinkerer, programmer, geek, power user and grandmother would all fit right at home. Of course, if you are willing to pay for it that is. Some people actually are:)
The problem is, one has to pay quite an amount of money for it before knowing if it is really as nice as some people say, so even if it is so much better, most people won't notice that (and again warezing comes into play btw.). This is not the case with linux, and this is what will lead to problems for apple eventually, I assume this will be visible in the iMac target group first, if MS doesn't crush that area with a kitchen sink included X-Box II before.
That said, I really hope Apple does well in the future, because I like people to have a choice, and certain OS manufacturers to have competition.
hehe, no it didn't consider OS X. But you're right. Unfortunately, from my (non Apple-user, presumably wrong) POV it seems like nearly everything in Appleland is for-pay, unless it's targeted towards the BSD-personality of OS X. And this again is as hard as working with a linux distribution. Not that this is bad (the for-pay part, I mean), but IMO the whole OS X stuff per se doesn't give a strong enough incentitive for (most) users to switch - this is clearly demonstratable (sp?) by looking at the selling numbers compared to XP.
Well, I dislike Apple, and I think they would not hesitate a second to act MS-like - if they could. Just look at the ultra-intrusive stuff they make for the win32 plattform like the quicktime player. Who the fuck told the darn thing to render pngs in my IE, and no, I'm NOT interested in a fucking "pro" upgrade, no need to ask me over and over.
So what I really was talking about were _free_ *nixes, not proprietary ones (yeah, yeah, I know Darwin etc.). Btw. I bet a sun workstation isn't harder to install than a Mac. Esp. if you bought them preinstalled;-).
I believe that this is the first Western country to take this stance. The German government seems to be under the influence of free software zealots, but they haven't ditched Microsoft yet. Norway might be the best test of what happens when avoiding Microsoft products becomes government policy.
Norway has opted not to prolong an exclusive contract with microsoft. No statement regarding of what that may mean for what they buy in the future.
Germany has made a deal to buy Linux systems in a major way and on an important location - for the IT structure of their parliament.
I remember using Mac's in school for the majority of my time (from grade school on up through High School). If this chain were true, why am I not a Mac user?
Because of the OS/Windows Environment advances. Ok, either you went to school in a time when the first and most intensive exposure to PCs (or Macs in your case) was in school, or you are wrong, because today nearly everybody at least knows someone being a "peecee"-guru, therefore school isn't as important as it once was in said "chain".
If you went to school in those old days, when MS Win (>= 95) came out, it was really advantage, at least Win 95 vs. MacOS 7 (8?) - software wise, because of the price and (maybe most importantly?) because of warezing. So this advantage would break the chain also.
But today, it's really hard to get a strong enough advantage to "break the chain". Even MS has trouble to raise the bar, in order to get people to desire - and therefore buy - newer versions of their software.
So, Open Source (or whatever possible MS competitor, I just doubt there's someone else out there) finally has a good chance to level the field, to catch up. We can discuss all day if KDE/Gnome + Linux/BSD are "as good as" or "better than" as Windows XP, the truth is that people have decided, and - seemingly - they (still) prefer the latter.
But people believe, and I'm also inclined to, that this is it, today, where the "chain" comes into action. And I also belive that in many places familiarity with an user interface just wouldn't matter much, and therefore not lead to high (re-)training costs, and that at these places "alternatives" could be used and one could rapidly see the benefits.
So, perhaps Norway has some of those places, schools, public authorities, whatever. All I want is a small fracture in this wall of "just MS", so that people who would otherwise would never have gotten the chance to even *see* an alternative will now have a real choice.
Really, give it some time, and *nix distibutions will be easier to install, much more liberal in usage conditions and much more trustable concerning privacy - btw. most of this is true now, but people will then have realized that. Fortunately, MS does what it can to strengthen these advanteges for open source.
Well that doesn't mean you're secure. It's worth remembering for some OpenBSD worshipping newbie zealots that every OS is as secure as the admin installing/maintaining the server. Let me say that I know the seasoned OpenBSD users surely are not prone to that, but that is true for (nearly) any OS, and for all *nixes.
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We have a similiar problem here (testing CD-ROMs, therefore we need any combination of e.g. winxx+servicepackyy+internetexplorerzz+with/withou t quicktime installed)
What I did was setting up a seperate linux partition and a boot-menu, allowing you to restore previously done disk images of the systems. Much faster than reinstalling and _guarantees_ the exact same configuration you started this.
Wouldn't that make your job easier (the 6 month reinstall cycle)?
Ordinarily I'd gladly take a photo of a couple, but these photos are meaningless.
Muahaha, I see something coming.
"Hello Mister Miller, you bought the Sony Ericsson's T68i last week, how are your first impressions?"
"Bad, really bad. I just returned it to the shop. Everywhere I went to with the phone, people were mad at me for being a "Sony con".
One man even threatened to knock me up, just because I wanted him to take a picture from my wife and me."
It's worse.
Crossing the line will open pandora's box.
I think this ISP's are stupid, because they begin a fight carrier vs. content.
And as expensive it may be to do a carrier's work, to lay cables etc., I think our world is rapidly developing into a "carrier overhead" or a "content scarcity", if you compare the relative value.
Extreme example, there's only one CNN, but there's a plethora of access providers making it possible for their users to reach CNN's website. I don't want to discuss the quality or whatever of CNN, but only the relative importance of _one_ content provider vs. carriers.
These access providers should fear that content providers turn the table and demand charging access providers for opening their sites for users.
AOL/Time Warner is one of the first I could see trying such a stunt.
Wasn't the "badness" of that movie the whole idea?
It's really amazing how this movie seperates people. Yes I'm also quite sure that this movie did indeed use some form of "badness" to get a message across. But I'm also still trying to find out what differentiates others and me from the people who don't think that.
Au contraire,
it just shows one of the most successfull managers of today praising linux.
I first didn't really get how this citation should express what you read into it. Now I think I got it, you mean cheap vs. free.
No, I'm quite sure Mr. Ballmer knew exactly what he was talking about when he said free.
Yeah, they did an interpretation not an advancement, at least I really doubt EL&P would have the guts to call it an advancement.
;-)
While many of your friends would have called it a straight improvement, IMO this is only acceptable in the sense of "a interpretation which fits my taster better". Many others would not say it's an improvement.
Contrast that to the example linux 0.99 vs linux 2.4.18. Is there really anyone saying that 2.4.18 isn't an improvement, even in the original meaning of the word "improvement"?
Hmm... maybe it was just too long ago, and you kids can't remember anything before rap.
Heh, let's get that outta way, my UID is lower and I know at least one other big adaption of EL&P of a quite well known classical piece, which is btw. older IIRC.
I understand that. But someone using base 5 wouldn't such numbers to describe the years.
Because, contrary to the development of music, open source development is directed, it's directed in a sense the evolution was at least directed one point in time.
You can't say "Beatles are better than American Jazz", but you can say "linux 2.4.18 is better than linux 0.9.9".
No matter where you look, open source developement is directed, with only small perturbations.
Can we really say that of music? Where is the uber-musician, standing on the shoulders of giants like Mozart and Bach, creating things they never have dreamed of?
Noel Gallagher? (amusing little on-topic sidestep)
And that's why I think that the "development" in music is not comparable to that in software, the benefit from copying (in a non-negative sense) is much more untangible, therefore less profitable, and in consequence of less value.
1993 is not a base 5 number, amd if it were, the difference could never be 20. :)
It's a complex theme, I for one would say that using themes from one musical work in another is not the same as using apache 1.3.18 to make apache 1.3.19. OTOH there is the application server zope, which uses a python webserver named medusa to serve its content. They incorporated it, similary to what happens in music sometimes, but not in the same way.
;-).
;-).
So, there are no hard borders, but I don't see anything in music which is analogous to apache 1.3.18 -> 1.3.19.
But let's take a short trip to reality
My point still stands that despite Toccata & Fugue being open source, the world still waits for the 1.1. version
And, by the way, there already are certain exceptions in copyrights concerning art, they even extend to trademarks, which at least are allowed to be "violated" by satire.
I think you should differentiate two factors here:
- Obsolescence of classical distribution channels
This is indeed the problem of big media corporations and covers the distribution of the good itself and marketing logistics. The importance of both of them has suffered quite a bit since the internet emerged. I venture a guess the the biggest fear of big media might be not the fact that people can copy and distribute their stuff, but that artist in the long term will loose their dependence on a company to get their stuff to the people.
- Collaborative work on an open source product (whatever it may be).
I think the latter mainly will affect software production, because the process of creating "art" does not inherently profit from collaboration. Would Bach's work really be any better if he had done it with a couple of fellows over the internet? Would it really improve if someone took it and came out with Toccata & Fuge 1.1?
This would be possible today, because there is no copyright etc. on Bachs work, but nobody seems to think it's a good idea.
Nice theory, but wrong IMO.
You have to look very closely at the differences of, let's call it "Physical World Communism" (PWB) vs. "Software Communism" (SC), where the latter shall be a crude way of naming the communistic elements you and your parent poster linked to open source ideas. We'll accept the word communism, while I think marxism would be more appropriate.
"So people tend to press everything they can out from a system that allows them to do it while trying to contribute as less as possible."
In PWC, this is a very real problem and is perhaps indeed the main point why such systems won't fly. The effect is that "bad" people consume more resources than they create, taking from the resource pool and shortening resources also of the people who create more than they consume, therefore accelerating the effect of people getting "bad". IIRC there are classical examples from game theory/psychology for that.
OTOH, in SC, it is not so simple to define resources. At least not a resources with the property that you can reduce resources by taking them from the pool. The closest thing that I can think of is "developer time", but the trick is the this resource doesn't follow communistic ideas, it strongly follows the ideas of individuality. Examples are project forks, developers dropping out of projects, etc. - things that happen daily in open source.
Usage of OS software doesn't reduce any resources of SC, therefore most freeriders in this "software communism" scheme do _not_ hurt the system.
Now we can look more closely at the resource "developer time", and this is IMO where the differences between BSD-style licenses and GPL come into play.
BSD-style licenses are in danger of resource exhaustion because a proprietary fork might "steal" mind-share and therefore indeed reduce said resource, but most projects using such license rightly seem not to be concerned about that.
The problem gets worse if there is more then one party involved which could profit or profits from proprietary derivatives from an BSD-licensed project, because all of a sudden there exists a new resource pool (income by selling the product) which makes it attractive to withhold from sharing resources. An example for this can be easily found on your favorite ews site.
The way which GPL tries to resolve those problems is known, and looking at the sheer number of competing companies contributing to linux suggests that it may be quite successful.
Oh, and btw., it is not suprising that something like OSS has emerged, IMO it is the best existant model for something like software, where resources are set up like I described above. What I find suprising is that one must always explain that it is the best, although nearly the same model is used in sciences/engineering very successful since their existance.
The problem with your POV:
If there's anything MS could do which would not directly thrown out of a court - and most certainly patent infringement allegations wouldn't - someone would end up in court with them.
Sadly, the extreme financial risks associated with that are enough for most people to not consider something like trying to invalidate said patents.
Therefore, as weak as their patents might be in our eyes, the fact that MS might have them is a very real danger.
O(n) means that there is a constant, C, such that for any problem of size N, the execution time of the algorithm is less than C*N.
:) ).
Small nitpick, the last one should probably be C*N + K, where K is a constant (you already used up the C
You're absolutely right. It's just that most of the posts, and esp. the one I replied to, focused on bugtraq. And this fear I wanted to dispell.
Don't want to nitpick, in fact, I don't even know if Fyodor released a policy for disclosure, but an often mentioned document is rain forest puppies' full disclosure policy
If they believe they just need to shell out 75 million dollars for a stinking mailing list in order to contral an important part of the world's infrastructure, they are idiots.
Getting something to work like bugtraq technically is absolutely no problem. A mailing list with 30000 subscribers, ok let it be 300000, isn't voodoo.
The "selling point" of bugtraq is/was the trust many people have in them, the people which post there, their policy. If anything would cause people to mistrust them, it needs just one trusted guy from the security community to start a new list, and bugtraq is dead. I've even read a post that one alternative has already started.
If someone like Dan Farmer, Wietse Venema or, for the hell of it, Bruce Schneier decided to start a bugtraq clone, the original would not stand a chance if its reputation had already been damaged.
Well, maybe they thought about it. But if they only implement a (non-trivial) subset of regexp search I will admire them even more.
Regexp are horrible from a complexity point of view.
According to this link regepx's complexity is of O(M*N), where M unfortunately is in the order of Googles DB, if my short calculation is correct. Note, this may be wrong, but the point stays that regexp searching is quite expensive and kills most of the optimizations you could do if you didn't want to provide them.
[talk about regexps are not so usefull..., but ...] What has become useful is what Google [google.com] taps into. And that is the human aspect. Data isn't important because it matches a*(b|c)a*. It's important because it is useful to people. Think about it: when you are looking for wares or porn, where do you go? Perl? Nope. IRC. Why? Because of the human element.
I understand your thinking.
But your thinking is wrong.
Think about it (no pun intended).
How much better would google be if one could use regexps in one's search request.
regexp and datamining are orthogonal.
What remains is a purported advantage from OS X in the UI, and as I said above, that is not enough for people to change, esp. considering how much one had to invest in order to change to a Mac.
Are there other clear advantages of OS X? It will be relativly easy for KDE/Gnome to get "good enough", they did and are still making major inroads, and once a foundation is laid, i.e. critical user/developer mass is reached, nearly every OSS project has proven that it slowly but surely is able to rival commercial offering. It's just much harder to build this critical mass in areas like window manager and desktop environments etc.
For instance, look how long it has taken apple to advance from the old MacOS, or how long MS needed to get win95 out of the door, it's hard for the proprietary side, too. Nowadays, there seems not to be much room left for major advances, so OSS GUIs don't need to chase a fast moving target anymore.
Btw. is there anything known what apple plans for an OS X successor? Oh, there I can't follow you. IMO, MS was quite ahead of Apple before OS X. You know, preemptive multitasking and that modern stuff which OS X brought you
With all its problems, Win NT was far more advanced than MacOS.
And about playing catchup, if MS succeeds with
That said, I really hope Apple does well in the future, because I like people to have a choice, and certain OS manufacturers to have competition.
hehe,
;-).
no it didn't consider OS X. But you're right. Unfortunately, from my (non Apple-user, presumably wrong) POV it seems like nearly everything in Appleland is for-pay, unless it's targeted towards the BSD-personality of OS X. And this again is as hard as working with a linux distribution. Not that this is bad (the for-pay part, I mean), but IMO the whole OS X stuff per se doesn't give a strong enough incentitive for (most) users to switch - this is clearly demonstratable (sp?) by looking at the selling numbers compared to XP.
Well, I dislike Apple, and I think they would not hesitate a second to act MS-like - if they could. Just look at the ultra-intrusive stuff they make for the win32 plattform like the quicktime player. Who the fuck told the darn thing to render pngs in my IE, and no, I'm NOT interested in a fucking "pro" upgrade, no need to ask me over and over.
So what I really was talking about were _free_ *nixes, not proprietary ones (yeah, yeah, I know Darwin etc.). Btw. I bet a sun workstation isn't harder to install than a Mac. Esp. if you bought them preinstalled
- Norway has opted not to prolong an exclusive contract with microsoft. No statement regarding of what that may mean for what they buy in the future.
- Germany has made a deal to buy Linux systems in a major way and on an important location - for the IT structure of their parliament.
Methinks Germany is far ahead of Norway.I remember using Mac's in school for the majority of my time (from grade school on up through High School). If this chain were true, why am I not a Mac user?
Because of the OS/Windows Environment advances.
Ok, either you went to school in a time when the first and most intensive exposure to PCs (or Macs in your case) was in school, or you are wrong, because today nearly everybody at least knows someone being a "peecee"-guru, therefore school isn't as important as it once was in said "chain".
If you went to school in those old days, when MS Win (>= 95) came out, it was really advantage, at least Win 95 vs. MacOS 7 (8?) - software wise, because of the price and (maybe most importantly?) because of warezing.
So this advantage would break the chain also.
But today, it's really hard to get a strong enough advantage to "break the chain". Even MS has trouble to raise the bar, in order to get people to desire - and therefore buy - newer versions of their software.
So, Open Source (or whatever possible MS competitor, I just doubt there's someone else out there) finally has a good chance to level the field, to catch up. We can discuss all day if KDE/Gnome + Linux/BSD are "as good as" or "better than" as Windows XP, the truth is that people have decided, and - seemingly - they (still) prefer the latter.
But people believe, and I'm also inclined to, that this is it, today, where the "chain" comes into action. And I also belive that in many places familiarity with an user interface just wouldn't matter much, and therefore not lead to high (re-)training costs, and that at these places "alternatives" could be used and one could rapidly see the benefits.
So, perhaps Norway has some of those places, schools, public authorities, whatever. All I want is a small fracture in this wall of "just MS", so that people who would otherwise would never have gotten the chance to even *see* an alternative will now have a real choice.
Really, give it some time, and *nix distibutions will be easier to install, much more liberal in usage conditions and much more trustable concerning privacy - btw. most of this is true now, but people will then have realized that.
Fortunately, MS does what it can to strengthen these advanteges for open source.
yupp
Well that doesn't mean you're secure.
It's worth remembering for some OpenBSD worshipping newbie zealots that every OS is as secure as the admin installing/maintaining the server.
Let me say that I know the seasoned OpenBSD users surely are not prone to that, but that is true for (nearly) any OS, and for all *nixes.