OK, John Cameron got away with spending $200 million to make Titanic, but...
If I recall, the break-even point for a movie is ticket grosses that are twice the cost of making the film.
That means $300 mil in this case. $290 if you want to be picky.
Big studios can take that kind of chance because they hedge their bets over multiple films. Even then, they don't do it any more often than they have to.
A little one-flick house?
Suicide or glory. Not much in-between.
Lots of other posters have mentioned pieces of the puzzle, so I risk being redundant here. But, it seems the whole equation goes something like this:
1. If each box only handles a part of the web, it is possible that most of the space on it's drive (or drives) are wasted anyway.
2. If disk latency means that cpus spend idle time, eliminating that latency means more throughput per box, hence fewer boxes. More money spent on DRAM, less money spent on CPU, power supplies, etc.
3. Even with same number of boxes, lower power draw, smaller and/or fewer UPS(s) required. With fewer boxes, even more reduction.
4. Which leads, of course, to lower A/C bills during the warm weather.
5. Fewer boxes, fewer pieces, whatever, means fewer things breaking. The impact of a single outage may be greater, but, from the cost standpoint, you need fewer man-hours to manage the outages, fewer spare-parts, etc.
6. Lower medical expenses from sysadmins going insane due to the noise from all those drives and the associated larger power supplies and extra cooling fans.
OK, that last item is a stretch, but how many sysadmins are more than a step from insanity anyway?
These Mindstorms things are amazing, but not half so amazing as the people who come up with ways to show them off. There are some real bright and creative folks out there.
When I was a kid, I was proud to make something looked kinda sorta like an airplane.
It sure as hell didn't fly or do anything spectacular.
In my head, I know that all of the neat 3-D tools artists use today are a blessing.
They make it faster, easier and cheaper to make incredibly real-looking illustrations.
Why then, do I find these hand-drawn illustrations so appealing? Is it just because they look different? Or did the artists add a little creative something that isn't so easy or so common today.
Consumers WILL get to see the things they get to see in ordinary trials.
The problem is that defendants -- and witnesses -- have rights, too, even when the defendant is Microsoft and the witnesses are Microsoft employees.
To get an idea of how this comes into play, you should understand the nature of a deposition. In a deposition, attorneys have far more latitude than they would in questioning a witness at trial.
The downside is that damaging or merely private information can be generated that turns out to be irrelevant to the case. For example, it's not uncommon to ask deposees about things like drug problems, financial problems, etc, that might reflect on their credibility. It might come up that some middle manager working on some project is a recovered and teetotalling alcoholic or was arrested for shoplifting as a teen or some such thing. That information probably has nothing to do with the case, never makes it into the courtroom and really isn't anybody's damned business.
That's one reason why some proceedings are not public.
CVS the answer? Mebbe, mebbe not.
on
Linus Does Not Scale
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
What a testament to Linus and the success of Linux. How many people could have brought a project like this so far so informally?
Now, how to move forward and expand the circle without diluting the value that he brings. Something like CVS can help, but the base problem isn't technical and the solution won't be technical, either.
The real problem is factoring out that part of the Linus load that Linus does better than anybody else can do, and offload other parts to those who can do them better than a loaded-down Linus.
The hard part for everyone, Linus included, is to understand how much the "other" part feeds into Linus's ability to do the "Linus" part.
Sometimes, even mundane tasks help you to maintain the vital connection needed to do the great things well.
I'm just glad I'm not the one having to work all of this out!
It's awfully hard to know without seeing the Borland compiler first,
but...
gcc is not known for handling C++ especially well. 3.0 is supposed to support the language better, but is reported to generate larger executables and no better performance than present.
I have no idea of how the Borland compiler would get along with current linkers and whether it would be better than the current mess, which is largely responsible for the long time required to start KDE apps.
This stuff may not matter for free developers, but commercial developers may see improved performance as one of the edges they can ask people to pay for.
I realize that there is no arguing with a determined cynic.
I would point out, however, that "what the law ought to say" is a loaded concept.
First, what a law "ought to say" isn't directly in the Court's jurisdiction. Legislators make the law and are free to clarify/fix laws that the Courts don't like. If you dougt the balancing power of Congress, for example, you need only look back to the FDR years and his threat to pack the court.
Second, it's also loaded with the pre-conceptions that a Judge brings to the bench. If a judge believes that the Constitution sets the parameters within which Congress can work, then the notion of "what the law ought to be" will be be consistent with strict constructionist principles.
Though many know of Bork only because of the partisan fiasco that accompanied his nomination for the Supreme Court (an unfortunate event that has foreshadowed the regular "Borking" of decent people by both sides of the aisle).
Bork is widely acknowledged in legal circles as one of our country's greatest legal minds.
He is widely respected for his integrity.
He is a well known legal conservative and strong believer in strict constructionist interpretation of the Constitution.
Anyone who thinks that the Microsoft case is a left-wing attack on big business should pay careful attention to Bork's words. Whatever else Bork may be, he ain't no left-wing anti-business type.
Some posters have mentioned the AOL server.
I'll mention again, though I have already mentioned it, Mozilla.
It is an Open Source project largely funded and developed by AOL, even if it makes you feel better to say Netscape.
If you read what I wrote, you would notice that I take no issue with Alan's opinions of AOL. The only question is why he should assume that we know what they are. If we don't know his issues, he has no basis to Alan's potential departure as an educational opportunity, not the basis for an insult.
A lot of us don't know why it is an insult to think that you might continue working for RH if AOL/TW buys them out.
That means it probably isn't an insult so much as an educational opportunity.
It's actually pretty easy to see reasons why you would want to stay, depending mightily on what AOL has in mind with such a purchase.
After all, your chance to influence the computing world at large and do many genuine good things would now be backed by a whole new level of resources.
Even the Mozilla fiasco seems to be rounding into shape now. The AOL folks may have learned a few things about Open Source software and Open Source ways.
So, Alan, please don't be insulted. Explain to us the problems you have with AOL. Let people know the dangers you see and why the negatives are important enough to send you seeking employment.
You're not obligated to do anything of the sort. It's really none of our business.
I hate to reply to my own post, but what are the moderators out there smoking?
Don't like the post, fine.
But redundant?
How can something posted within a few minutes of the story itself be redundant? It's the later posts, pal, that are redundant. Check your dictionary if you don't know what the word means.
After many years as an analyst and developer, I spent a year writing technical documentation aimed at application developers for a switching platform.
It was a revalation. A couple of thoughts:
Point one: You're right. Writing documentation is not a lot of fun.
Point two: It's a whole lot harder than you think -- at least if you care about the result.
Just like programming: It's pretty easy to write lousy doco. It's hard to write good stuff.
As to the developers being most qualified to write it?
Ha!
A few actually are quite good, but most aren't. The problem isn't knowledge or even writing ability. The trouble is that developers typically see things differently from users. Things of critical importance to someone working deep in the bowels of code may not matter at all to someone who just calls it through an API or who uses the program.
These are among the reasons that high-quality documentation will tend to be in short supply unless money is paid.
There is, of course, another reason, and your post demonstrates it: developers don't seem to think that writers have any special skills and tend not to value their contribution beyond the time-saving. The people asking for help too often hold little regard for those who can offer it.
Natural time capsules like Pompeii, Herculaneum, the "ice man", Peruvian mountain mummies fascinate the Hell out of me because they give a hint of the life that was lived by those using the things left behind.
This discovery seems especially interesting because reconstructing bronze age villages has been the province of experimental archaeologists like the late Dr. Peter Reynolds. It should be good to have more data to compare their reconstructions with.
Computer generated celebrities are fine, I guess,
but are we really that inventive?
Starmakers give us Britney Spears. Worse, they give us Britney clone after clone after clone, at least when they're not cooking up another boy band or Country-Western Hat Act or heavy metal lizard band.
Britney Spears, yes. No Doubt, no.
Do you believe that a million CG monkeys at a million CG terminals would ever come up with a Humphrey Bogart, a Jimmy Stewart? Heck, how about an Arnold Schwartzenegger (Give it up man, with that accent, you'll never make it in movies).
Part of the problem is that you want to define freedoms as it suits you.
Going back to my nice simple freedom to occupy my house. Some others might view that as counter to their freedom to take shelter as needed. I cannot exercise my freedom without the ability to take away theirs. Can't be done.
Some posters have tried to pretend that this isn't so because nobody wants my house but me. Truth is, if I have to rely on that, I don't have freedom at all. I just take advantage of a happy coincidence that can be taken from me at the whim of someone who decides they want a corner lot.
My point on freedom of speech has nothing to do with a freedom to censor, though I think that's an interesting twist and will have to chew on it a while.
You accept freedom of speech as a fundamental right and so do I. That freedom, however is nothing without the power to guarantee it. There are places in this world where such freedom doesn't exist. This is brought home by the recent rescue of 8 foreign aid workers who were accused of preaching Christianity in Afghanistan. They had a fundamental right to free speech, but in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, they didn't have the power to protect that right. They were thrown in jail. If they hadn't been rescued, they might have been executed.
It's clear that I don't agree with him.
It's also clear that your arguments are vacuous.
Whether a million, a thousand, or even one person somewhere out there in the world wants my house (or my car or my television, etc) is immaterial. I am not free to enjoy them if I have no power to prevent others from taking them or from taking them over.
As to your brushing off of free speech, I can only assume that you are not American or that you know nothing of your own history, partitioned government structure or laws.
If they object to a software author's choosing his own license because it is an exercise of power instead of freedom, that implies that other freedoms are not exercises of power.
If they are exercises of power, then RMS's objection to license choice becomes a big "So what?". The only way to avoid that problem is to believe that you can exercise freedom without exercising power.
Re:Strange distinction.
on
Freedom or Power?
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Oversimplification? Hardly.
Your notion of granting freedom to others as a dissolution of power is just plain wrong. It is a transfer of power. Those who receive the freedom obtain the power that goes with it, including the power to enforce the GPL against those who wrongfully derive from their own work. In fact, it is a power mulitiplier. The author has given some (but not all) power up to the licensees. However, each of those licensees have gained power that approaches that of the original author -- especially with regard to derived work. In a sense, the GPL is an empowering tool, not a destroyer of power.
Your "criticism" of my home defense example is confused and confusing. Not surprising given that you don't seem to understand what FUD is.
Slashdot Mirror
;0)
If I recall, the break-even point for a movie is ticket grosses that are twice the cost of making the film.
That means $300 mil in this case. $290 if you want to be picky.
Big studios can take that kind of chance because they hedge their bets over multiple films. Even then, they don't do it any more often than they have to.
A little one-flick house?
Suicide or glory. Not much in-between.
Lots of other posters have mentioned pieces of the puzzle, so I risk being redundant here. But, it seems the whole equation goes something like this:
1. If each box only handles a part of the web, it is possible that most of the space on it's drive (or drives) are wasted anyway.
2. If disk latency means that cpus spend idle time, eliminating that latency means more throughput per box, hence fewer boxes. More money spent on DRAM, less money spent on CPU, power supplies, etc.
3. Even with same number of boxes, lower power draw, smaller and/or fewer UPS(s) required. With fewer boxes, even more reduction.
4. Which leads, of course, to lower A/C bills during the warm weather.
5. Fewer boxes, fewer pieces, whatever, means fewer things breaking. The impact of a single outage may be greater, but, from the cost standpoint, you need fewer man-hours to manage the outages, fewer spare-parts, etc.
6. Lower medical expenses from sysadmins going insane due to the noise from all those drives and the associated larger power supplies and extra cooling fans.
OK, that last item is a stretch, but how many sysadmins are more than a step from insanity anyway?
When I was a kid, I was proud to make something looked kinda sorta like an airplane.
It sure as hell didn't fly or do anything spectacular.
Well, it did come apart if I dropped it.
I don't have anything new to add, ust wanted to single that line out. I really like it.
They make it faster, easier and cheaper to make incredibly real-looking illustrations.
Why then, do I find these hand-drawn illustrations so appealing? Is it just because they look different? Or did the artists add a little creative something that isn't so easy or so common today.
Whatever, I sure did enjoy them.
The problem is that defendants -- and witnesses -- have rights, too, even when the defendant is Microsoft and the witnesses are Microsoft employees.
To get an idea of how this comes into play, you should understand the nature of a deposition. In a deposition, attorneys have far more latitude than they would in questioning a witness at trial.
The downside is that damaging or merely private information can be generated that turns out to be irrelevant to the case. For example, it's not uncommon to ask deposees about things like drug problems, financial problems, etc, that might reflect on their credibility. It might come up that some middle manager working on some project is a recovered and teetotalling alcoholic or was arrested for shoplifting as a teen or some such thing. That information probably has nothing to do with the case, never makes it into the courtroom and really isn't anybody's damned business.
That's one reason why some proceedings are not public.
Now, how to move forward and expand the circle without diluting the value that he brings. Something like CVS can help, but the base problem isn't technical and the solution won't be technical, either.
The real problem is factoring out that part of the Linus load that Linus does better than anybody else can do, and offload other parts to those who can do them better than a loaded-down Linus.
The hard part for everyone, Linus included, is to understand how much the "other" part feeds into Linus's ability to do the "Linus" part.
Sometimes, even mundane tasks help you to maintain the vital connection needed to do the great things well.
I'm just glad I'm not the one having to work all of this out!
It's awfully hard to know without seeing the Borland compiler first,
but...
gcc is not known for handling C++ especially well. 3.0 is supposed to support the language better, but is reported to generate larger executables and no better performance than present.
I have no idea of how the Borland compiler would get along with current linkers and whether it would be better than the current mess, which is largely responsible for the long time required to start KDE apps.
This stuff may not matter for free developers, but commercial developers may see improved performance as one of the edges they can ask people to pay for.
I would point out, however, that "what the law ought to say" is a loaded concept.
First, what a law "ought to say" isn't directly in the Court's jurisdiction. Legislators make the law and are free to clarify/fix laws that the Courts don't like. If you dougt the balancing power of Congress, for example, you need only look back to the FDR years and his threat to pack the court.
Second, it's also loaded with the pre-conceptions that a Judge brings to the bench. If a judge believes that the Constitution sets the parameters within which Congress can work, then the notion of "what the law ought to be" will be be consistent with strict constructionist principles.
Bork is widely acknowledged in legal circles as one of our country's greatest legal minds.
He is widely respected for his integrity.
He is a well known legal conservative and strong believer in strict constructionist interpretation of the Constitution.
Anyone who thinks that the Microsoft case is a left-wing attack on big business should pay careful attention to Bork's words. Whatever else Bork may be, he ain't no left-wing anti-business type.
If AOL claims that Microsoft has no right to sue monopolists whose actions hurt them (Microsoft), that certainly would be hypocritical.
That ain't the fact scenario
Microsoft is a convicted monopolist whose activities negatively impacted Netscape, now a division of AOL.
I'm sure that AOL stands steadfastly behind Microsoft's right to sue any monopolist that damages it.
I'll mention again, though I have already mentioned it, Mozilla.
It is an Open Source project largely funded and developed by AOL, even if it makes you feel better to say Netscape.
If you read what I wrote, you would notice that I take no issue with Alan's opinions of AOL. The only question is why he should assume that we know what they are. If we don't know his issues, he has no basis to Alan's potential departure as an educational opportunity, not the basis for an insult.
A lot of us don't know why it is an insult to think that you might continue working for RH if AOL/TW buys them out.
That means it probably isn't an insult so much as an educational opportunity.
It's actually pretty easy to see reasons why you would want to stay, depending mightily on what AOL has in mind with such a purchase.
After all, your chance to influence the computing world at large and do many genuine good things would now be backed by a whole new level of resources.
Even the Mozilla fiasco seems to be rounding into shape now. The AOL folks may have learned a few things about Open Source software and Open Source ways.
So, Alan, please don't be insulted. Explain to us the problems you have with AOL. Let people know the dangers you see and why the negatives are important enough to send you seeking employment.
You're not obligated to do anything of the sort. It's really none of our business.
It might do some good, though.
I hate to reply to my own post, but what are the moderators out there smoking?
Don't like the post, fine.
But redundant?
How can something posted within a few minutes of the story itself be redundant? It's the later posts, pal, that are redundant. Check your dictionary if you don't know what the word means.
They're always asking me about virii, breakdowns and all of the other things I don't deal with in my Linux-enabled life.
The appropriate technical response, I believe,
"Say what?"
Leastways, that's what the folks from Microsoft would say.
It was a revalation. A couple of thoughts:
Point one: You're right. Writing documentation is not a lot of fun.
Point two: It's a whole lot harder than you think -- at least if you care about the result. Just like programming: It's pretty easy to write lousy doco. It's hard to write good stuff.
As to the developers being most qualified to write it?
Ha!
A few actually are quite good, but most aren't. The problem isn't knowledge or even writing ability. The trouble is that developers typically see things differently from users. Things of critical importance to someone working deep in the bowels of code may not matter at all to someone who just calls it through an API or who uses the program.
These are among the reasons that high-quality documentation will tend to be in short supply unless money is paid.
There is, of course, another reason, and your post demonstrates it: developers don't seem to think that writers have any special skills and tend not to value their contribution beyond the time-saving. The people asking for help too often hold little regard for those who can offer it.
I don't care what the other guy says.
I laughed out loud.
Not that it takes much.
;0)
Natural time capsules like Pompeii, Herculaneum, the "ice man", Peruvian mountain mummies fascinate the Hell out of me because they give a hint of the life that was lived by those using the things left behind.
This discovery seems especially interesting because reconstructing bronze age villages has been the province of experimental archaeologists like the late Dr. Peter Reynolds. It should be good to have more data to compare their reconstructions with.
Computer generated celebrities are fine, I guess,
but are we really that inventive?
Starmakers give us Britney Spears. Worse, they give us Britney clone after clone after clone, at least when they're not cooking up another boy band or Country-Western Hat Act or heavy metal lizard band.
Britney Spears, yes. No Doubt, no.
Do you believe that a million CG monkeys at a million CG terminals would ever come up with a Humphrey Bogart, a Jimmy Stewart? Heck, how about an Arnold Schwartzenegger (Give it up man, with that accent, you'll never make it in movies).
Life is more creative than we are.
Thank God for that. It keeps things interesting.
I think you're the one being too simplistic here.
Part of the problem is that you want to define freedoms as it suits you.
Going back to my nice simple freedom to occupy my house. Some others might view that as counter to their freedom to take shelter as needed. I cannot exercise my freedom without the ability to take away theirs. Can't be done.
Some posters have tried to pretend that this isn't so because nobody wants my house but me. Truth is, if I have to rely on that, I don't have freedom at all. I just take advantage of a happy coincidence that can be taken from me at the whim of someone who decides they want a corner lot.
My point on freedom of speech has nothing to do with a freedom to censor, though I think that's an interesting twist and will have to chew on it a while.
You accept freedom of speech as a fundamental right and so do I. That freedom, however is nothing without the power to guarantee it. There are places in this world where such freedom doesn't exist. This is brought home by the recent rescue of 8 foreign aid workers who were accused of preaching Christianity in Afghanistan. They had a fundamental right to free speech, but in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, they didn't have the power to protect that right. They were thrown in jail. If they hadn't been rescued, they might have been executed.
It's clear that I don't agree with him.
It's also clear that your arguments are vacuous.
Whether a million, a thousand, or even one person somewhere out there in the world wants my house (or my car or my television, etc) is immaterial. I am not free to enjoy them if I have no power to prevent others from taking them or from taking them over.
As to your brushing off of free speech, I can only assume that you are not American or that you know nothing of your own history, partitioned government structure or laws.
Troll?
Hardly.
Let me connect the dots for you.
If they object to a software author's choosing his own license because it is an exercise of power instead of freedom, that implies that other freedoms are not exercises of power.
If they are exercises of power, then RMS's objection to license choice becomes a big "So what?". The only way to avoid that problem is to believe that you can exercise freedom without exercising power.
Oversimplification? Hardly.
Your notion of granting freedom to others as a dissolution of power is just plain wrong. It is a transfer of power. Those who receive the freedom obtain the power that goes with it, including the power to enforce the GPL against those who wrongfully derive from their own work. In fact, it is a power mulitiplier. The author has given some (but not all) power up to the licensees. However, each of those licensees have gained power that approaches that of the original author -- especially with regard to derived work. In a sense, the GPL is an empowering tool, not a destroyer of power.
Your "criticism" of my home defense example is confused and confusing. Not surprising given that you don't seem to understand what FUD is.
PS. I don't rely on EULAs. I use free software.
I don't understand RMS's obsession with powerless freedom.
Any freedom that means something is, in some way, an expression of power.
The freedom to own my own home and house my family is meaningless unless I can exercise the power to keep others out.
The freedom to speak out against the government is empty unless there is power to prevent government censorship.
The GPL's guarantees of freedom to take, use, modify and distribute source code are meaningless without the power to enforce them.
Freedom without power is no freedom at all.