I don't think anyone is contesting that the PS3 is worth the $599 Sony is charging. Most are just saying it's a lot of money. It's a matter of scale. Just compare the price to how much its target consumer makes in salaries.
I understand why they did it this way instead of making the parts like the blu-ray drive and harddisk optional (to establish certain standards by which developers can develop). It doesn't make it less painful to shell out that money.
Nobody likes fragmentation. Least of all the people who initiate the fragmentation itself. Unfortunately, it sometimes becomes necessary to do so if there is disagreement in the way a project is handled.
In this case and as a one-time Java software developer, I would definitely NOT want fragmentation in Java's implementation. I'm hoping that Sun can somehow release the source to be freely viewed and modified *with the constraint that any modifications made will comply with the JSRs*. No, it is not totally free, but it adheres to the philosophy of sticking together to be more effective. If someone wants changes, let it be done under the auspices of the JCP. I would agree to that kind of a license if and only if Sun relinquishes control of the JCP to the public.
Under the FOSS philosophy, software developers really are reduced in value. Basically, any work a FOSS developer does will not translate to much personal value for him/her. If any money is to be made, it is in services that set up and customize said FOSS for paying customers. The programmer gives whatever value he/she had away. FOSS developers only hope for a sustained source of income from developing software is to setup a donations-based system (think PayPal) or work for a company who takes the zero-value software and make money off of it from services.
Which is why companies who make money off of FOSS should not be frowned unless they do not contribute anything back to the developers (either by hiring them or donating money).
What FOSS developers gets is 1) recognition, 2) satisfaction knowing he has contributed something to the greater public and 3) should the FOSS community grow, he/she will have the benefit of using all that available FOSS software. (Admittedly, there's not much there that translates to man's basic necessities of food, shelter and security.)
As a software developer, I can (and do) charge money for that one-time development of FOSS. From there there'll be no recurring charges nor can I sell it again. My hope is that if there's a groundswell for this kind of development, I can make money off of other people's work as well. In that sense, it's a cross between capitalism and communism.
I'm reminded of that quote from Bambi: If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all, -_^. In this case, "constructive" should replace nice. I hate having to wait several hours till moderators have had enough time to moderate terrible posts to below my set threshhold.
Sometimes I wonder how low the standards for nerdom has gone. Most top-level comments here are the same old "I don't like Fedora (I like so-and-so)" comments disguised to sound like there was a lot of wisdom in it. Heck, some don't even go to the trouble of making their comments look smart. Many of the RedHat/Fedora detractors either a) don't reference the actual article, or b) spout utter nonsense not even backed by passable facts (or both).
For goodness sake, could the nerds be smarter and make comments that are more constructive. Where's the intelligence? People just sound like whiners.
There's no reasonable problem, really. From what I gather with the way the email was written, the email was meant to appeal to the rational capacity behind a lot of people who get so easily emotionally excited. There are people out there who are wary of being backstabbed by corporate entities specially since Microsoft (and the old IBM) gave many people that impression by screwing the public over and over.
As for the general public who don't really care for Fedora or would like to see Fedora die (most likely because they're fanatics of other distributions), this email is something good to reference whenever someone would care enough to defend RedHat and Fedora.
It doesn't matter what kind of case you try to bring up. The important thing is that you have good lawyers. Lawyers don't seem to care for justice. They care about law. Given an objective, they will try to bend the law as far as they can to achieve their objective.
Well, I won't contest that he does sound like a switcher, but that's not necessarilly a bad thing. In fact, it's good to always use whatever's best for you instead of getting stuck with what's most comfortable.
I actually liked the review. He was very helpful in sharing what needs to be done to get FC5 working with nVidia hardware. He was also very impartial to distro and desktop environment. The fact that he had a favorite Gnome desktop background makes his "until KDE 4.0" statement sound like he's just being openminded about things.
Kudos to the author! Very helpful article.
Note: I actually have an x86_64 machine with nVidia hardware (nForce4 and 6600GT vid), but oddly enough, graphical installation worked like a charm.
In the interest of understanding things (and to avoid actually getting modded down), could you (or anyone else) post actual examples of his arrogance or assholiness? Google has a bit to say, but I'm sure I'm limited by my keysearch terms.
Goes to show people how monetary figures give value to a product. In the case of OpenSSH, it's free so many people take it for granted. The truth is, OpenSSH is extremely important for a lot of people who administer these boxes. Even regular users may use it (SecureFTP) without knowing.
Good Lord, not Microsoft! (Not being an anti-MS junkie here but) From their history, whenever they buy out companies, they usually just strip out the technologies they can use and abandon those that help competing products (there's that antivirus and another piece of software I can't seem to recall). Since they own the product, they can also be more restricting with anyone who wants to pick up development. Developers would have to fork the code as it exists prior to the purchase.
I think that when some people post of how good their competing project is (ie. Gnome vs. KDE, Linux vs. *BSD), most are secretly hoping that the people reading it would abandon the project for their own. Though I doubt the decrease in funds of the OpenBSD project is significantly caused by naysayers, I'm wondering now how these people feel when it actually comes to pass.
As for the OpenBSD programmers, I wonder if at the very end, if no change happens, they will decide to create a different entity to handle OpenSSH and see if that will receive funding that OpenBSD cannot attract.
See, that's what I dislike about Microsoft... they're always out to kill. I'd appreciate it if other devices or apps die not because they were in any way excluded but because people just didn't prefer them.
Are you serious?? Windows hit version 3.0 in 1990, 95 in 1995 and 2003 a few years ago. MacOS is at X. The Linux kernel has been wallowing in version 2 for ages.
If you're addressing idealists, then it doesn't matter who wins. They will still continue on working on the projects that they're interested in. If you mean to discourage them with your words, shame on you. I doubt many of these tech-savvy people are so aloof as not to be aware that one technology or another has become a de facto standard.
If you don't free(3) memory after (c|m|re)alloc(3), isn't that a memory leak? I think in order to qualify that, the reference to the allocated memory block has to be lost, but if it isn't free()'d anyway even though it's been kept track of, same difference. Right now, nothing comes to mind that constitutes a memory leak other than that.
I just hope they'll be more friendly to third-party developers. Nurturing them instead of alienating them. Palm has always had a great rapport with third-party devs. In fact, a huge number of the apps available for the Palm were developed not only by third-party app developers but by free and open source software developers.
So far, Linux phones like the Motorola ones and many based on QTopia have been met with resentment by 3rd party devs. OpenEZX laments that it can't even access certain functionality through native API calls, much less roll out their own kernel.
Like most everyone here, I don't find their statements confusing at all. In fact, even before many of these devices started integrating certain services in one device (game platform, DVR, browser, mail agent, etc.), I had already been pining for one. I say it's about time and right now I'd rather prefer a solution from Sony than Microsoft.
They should invite crackers around the world to participate, and not have some "carefully controlled environment" if they really want to test their system.
Then, pray tell, who were they listening to with regards to the N-Gage? _I_ want a nice portable gaming platform with great communication features. But what I have in mind is nothing like the N-Gage. It's underpowered and I don't like the feel of its keypad.
Nokia's problem is that they keep developing stuff in-house without seeming to gather feedback or comments from their market. They really should just host a site where users can post feature requests or comments for their next products. I've seen the N-Gage and while I think it's possible to come up with a gaming platform/cellphone, they didn't do it well.
The description and whitepaper on Stateless Linux reminds me of how lab computing used to be back in college (around 1996) where all of our lab computers didn't have harddisks but would boot from an image on a Novell Netware server (via network PROM boot). All the programs and the user's data would reside on the server but the processing power used would be the client workstation's. Seems to me Novell would be one of those companies who'd be interested in this approach and would get on the Fedora Stateless Linux bandwagon. It would be nice if the two companies would actually work on this since the Fedora project is neutral grounds.
I think Stateless Linux is a great idea. In fact, I think Gnome should be extended so that a session can span several computers where the person logs on to. Then we could couple up distributed computing on top of that and make it part of the Stateless Linux-Gnome system.
Even without prior art, these are some of the most stupidest patents I've ever heard of. I used to read about new inventions and concepts and would always smile in wonder at the amount of innovation going on. Nowadays, it just seems one can patent ANY process regardless of how non-unique or simple they are. Makes me want to scream "Stupid!" sometimes.
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I don't think anyone is contesting that the PS3 is worth the $599 Sony is charging. Most are just saying it's a lot of money. It's a matter of scale. Just compare the price to how much its target consumer makes in salaries.
I understand why they did it this way instead of making the parts like the blu-ray drive and harddisk optional (to establish certain standards by which developers can develop). It doesn't make it less painful to shell out that money.
I just wish Sony handled their PR a lot better.
Nobody likes fragmentation. Least of all the people who initiate the fragmentation itself. Unfortunately, it sometimes becomes necessary to do so if there is disagreement in the way a project is handled.
In this case and as a one-time Java software developer, I would definitely NOT want fragmentation in Java's implementation. I'm hoping that Sun can somehow release the source to be freely viewed and modified *with the constraint that any modifications made will comply with the JSRs*. No, it is not totally free, but it adheres to the philosophy of sticking together to be more effective. If someone wants changes, let it be done under the auspices of the JCP. I would agree to that kind of a license if and only if Sun relinquishes control of the JCP to the public.
Under the FOSS philosophy, software developers really are reduced in value. Basically, any work a FOSS developer does will not translate to much personal value for him/her. If any money is to be made, it is in services that set up and customize said FOSS for paying customers. The programmer gives whatever value he/she had away. FOSS developers only hope for a sustained source of income from developing software is to setup a donations-based system (think PayPal) or work for a company who takes the zero-value software and make money off of it from services.
Which is why companies who make money off of FOSS should not be frowned unless they do not contribute anything back to the developers (either by hiring them or donating money).
What FOSS developers gets is 1) recognition, 2) satisfaction knowing he has contributed something to the greater public and 3) should the FOSS community grow, he/she will have the benefit of using all that available FOSS software. (Admittedly, there's not much there that translates to man's basic necessities of food, shelter and security.)
As a software developer, I can (and do) charge money for that one-time development of FOSS. From there there'll be no recurring charges nor can I sell it again. My hope is that if there's a groundswell for this kind of development, I can make money off of other people's work as well. In that sense, it's a cross between capitalism and communism.
I'm reminded of that quote from Bambi: If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all, -_^. In this case, "constructive" should replace nice. I hate having to wait several hours till moderators have had enough time to moderate terrible posts to below my set threshhold.
Slashdot: New for nerds, stuff that matters.
Sometimes I wonder how low the standards for nerdom has gone. Most top-level comments here are the same old "I don't like Fedora (I like so-and-so)" comments disguised to sound like there was a lot of wisdom in it. Heck, some don't even go to the trouble of making their comments look smart. Many of the RedHat/Fedora detractors either a) don't reference the actual article, or b) spout utter nonsense not even backed by passable facts (or both).
For goodness sake, could the nerds be smarter and make comments that are more constructive. Where's the intelligence? People just sound like whiners.
There's no reasonable problem, really. From what I gather with the way the email was written, the email was meant to appeal to the rational capacity behind a lot of people who get so easily emotionally excited. There are people out there who are wary of being backstabbed by corporate entities specially since Microsoft (and the old IBM) gave many people that impression by screwing the public over and over.
As for the general public who don't really care for Fedora or would like to see Fedora die (most likely because they're fanatics of other distributions), this email is something good to reference whenever someone would care enough to defend RedHat and Fedora.
It doesn't matter what kind of case you try to bring up. The important thing is that you have good lawyers. Lawyers don't seem to care for justice. They care about law. Given an objective, they will try to bend the law as far as they can to achieve their objective.
Well, I won't contest that he does sound like a switcher, but that's not necessarilly a bad thing. In fact, it's good to always use whatever's best for you instead of getting stuck with what's most comfortable.
I actually liked the review. He was very helpful in sharing what needs to be done to get FC5 working with nVidia hardware. He was also very impartial to distro and desktop environment. The fact that he had a favorite Gnome desktop background makes his "until KDE 4.0" statement sound like he's just being openminded about things.
Kudos to the author! Very helpful article.
Note: I actually have an x86_64 machine with nVidia hardware (nForce4 and 6600GT vid), but oddly enough, graphical installation worked like a charm.
In the interest of understanding things (and to avoid actually getting modded down), could you (or anyone else) post actual examples of his arrogance or assholiness? Google has a bit to say, but I'm sure I'm limited by my keysearch terms.
Goes to show people how monetary figures give value to a product. In the case of OpenSSH, it's free so many people take it for granted. The truth is, OpenSSH is extremely important for a lot of people who administer these boxes. Even regular users may use it (SecureFTP) without knowing.
Good Lord, not Microsoft! (Not being an anti-MS junkie here but) From their history, whenever they buy out companies, they usually just strip out the technologies they can use and abandon those that help competing products (there's that antivirus and another piece of software I can't seem to recall). Since they own the product, they can also be more restricting with anyone who wants to pick up development. Developers would have to fork the code as it exists prior to the purchase.
I think that when some people post of how good their competing project is (ie. Gnome vs. KDE, Linux vs. *BSD), most are secretly hoping that the people reading it would abandon the project for their own. Though I doubt the decrease in funds of the OpenBSD project is significantly caused by naysayers, I'm wondering now how these people feel when it actually comes to pass.
As for the OpenBSD programmers, I wonder if at the very end, if no change happens, they will decide to create a different entity to handle OpenSSH and see if that will receive funding that OpenBSD cannot attract.
See, that's what I dislike about Microsoft ... they're always out to kill. I'd appreciate it if other devices or apps die not because they were in any way excluded but because people just didn't prefer them.
Are you serious?? Windows hit version 3.0 in 1990, 95 in 1995 and 2003 a few years ago. MacOS is at X. The Linux kernel has been wallowing in version 2 for ages.
What's a good method for determining which to cache and which not to, then?
If you're addressing idealists, then it doesn't matter who wins. They will still continue on working on the projects that they're interested in. If you mean to discourage them with your words, shame on you. I doubt many of these tech-savvy people are so aloof as not to be aware that one technology or another has become a de facto standard.
If you don't free(3) memory after (c|m|re)alloc(3), isn't that a memory leak? I think in order to qualify that, the reference to the allocated memory block has to be lost, but if it isn't free()'d anyway even though it's been kept track of, same difference. Right now, nothing comes to mind that constitutes a memory leak other than that.
I just hope they'll be more friendly to third-party developers. Nurturing them instead of alienating them. Palm has always had a great rapport with third-party devs. In fact, a huge number of the apps available for the Palm were developed not only by third-party app developers but by free and open source software developers.
So far, Linux phones like the Motorola ones and many based on QTopia have been met with resentment by 3rd party devs. OpenEZX laments that it can't even access certain functionality through native API calls, much less roll out their own kernel.
Like most everyone here, I don't find their statements confusing at all. In fact, even before many of these devices started integrating certain services in one device (game platform, DVR, browser, mail agent, etc.), I had already been pining for one. I say it's about time and right now I'd rather prefer a solution from Sony than Microsoft.
They should invite crackers around the world to participate, and not have some "carefully controlled environment" if they really want to test their system.
Then, pray tell, who were they listening to with regards to the N-Gage? _I_ want a nice portable gaming platform with great communication features. But what I have in mind is nothing like the N-Gage. It's underpowered and I don't like the feel of its keypad.
Nokia's problem is that they keep developing stuff in-house without seeming to gather feedback or comments from their market. They really should just host a site where users can post feature requests or comments for their next products. I've seen the N-Gage and while I think it's possible to come up with a gaming platform/cellphone, they didn't do it well.
The description and whitepaper on Stateless Linux reminds me of how lab computing used to be back in college (around 1996) where all of our lab computers didn't have harddisks but would boot from an image on a Novell Netware server (via network PROM boot). All the programs and the user's data would reside on the server but the processing power used would be the client workstation's. Seems to me Novell would be one of those companies who'd be interested in this approach and would get on the Fedora Stateless Linux bandwagon. It would be nice if the two companies would actually work on this since the Fedora project is neutral grounds.
I think Stateless Linux is a great idea. In fact, I think Gnome should be extended so that a session can span several computers where the person logs on to. Then we could couple up distributed computing on top of that and make it part of the Stateless Linux-Gnome system.
Exciting times!
I'm from Calgary and I'm sorry to hear that. I'll definitely consider going.
Even without prior art, these are some of the most stupidest patents I've ever heard of. I used to read about new inventions and concepts and would always smile in wonder at the amount of innovation going on. Nowadays, it just seems one can patent ANY process regardless of how non-unique or simple they are. Makes me want to scream "Stupid!" sometimes.