Now that we can have Linux or BSD used as both Netware, TCP/IP, Web, RealAudio, AppleTalk, Samba, etc. servers, how could one OS that is not, at this moment, guaranteed to work as well as the Linux/BSD things be successfull ?
Netware has indeed a great reputation but convincing people to switch to it and thus lose the extra protocol/services they would have under another already available Free OS sounds risky, IMHO...
Has there been a "market-pemetration" study ? --
I don't think this is fully real-time yet.
I mean I expected some cybernanny-like program that could just analyze the frames political correctness in real time and just erasing/modify "shocking" details.
I actually think a porno film viewed with that should be really funny.
By the way, it will be some time before they can accurately wash up the sound too (I don't mean "beeping").
But once they can do it, nobody will even be able to harangue the masses on TV without being potentially either censored, adapted, etc.
Frightening times, when themass-media are about to become even more powerful ever. --
The first Network computers were produced by Acorn and were equiped with either a modem or a network card.
They were booting amazingly quickly, provided perfect television display (with the nicest anti-aliasing ever) and were damn quick at displaying HTML (NCFresco).
If you can still buy a cheap one on the Net, there are other alternatives still being produced and featuring lots of goodies like a RiscStation or some Oregan product.
The latter supports lots of features includinf Java, but no CSS, though.
--
What I see here is that this kind of debate is generating some stupid competition in which you have the technologicaly-happy (KDE) and the ethically-happy (Gnome).
IMHO, KDE is smoother and more complete than Gnome. Like it or not.
But now, if we just let people choose ONE solution instead of us then we might encounter a problem similar than the Windows one we just start to solve by bringing variety to the desktop market.
So ? What is the best UI ?
This is the one you'll take time to choose, not the one (whether goods or bad) that somebody will have decided that YOU will install on your Personal Computer.
They also seek handy phone numbers.
I just understood why:
My collegues brand-new WAP handy just left him an SMS message : some kind of advertising for a WAP service, it seemed.
If the handy penetration rate is that huge, then it seems the'll touch even more people with SMSpam than with mail-spam.
Hence their need for loads of Handy#...
I happily don't have one, but having used mtnsms.com to send SMS messages to a friend, I am now afraid I may have unvoluntarily given his handy# to potential SMSpammers.:-( --
...but just let you know about indelicate persons :
I personally have hundreds of aliases that I give to new contacts.
I preferably use really stupid ones whenever I am not sure about my contact ; e.g. I sent one day mirko@garagiste.com to an inoffensive-looking web site while requesting information about data security.
You can't imagine how many sex spams I received under this alias.
Also, whenever requesting for documents to be sent through normal post, I usually give a fake first name (e.g. Baudoin, Ibrahim, Bill, etc.) which then allows me to track the spammers.
At the end, I just set some filters on the spammed accounts so that I can get rid of spams.
Now, if they want your personal data, you can consider they just want to know how they can reach you with public mean (email, mailbox, etc) and then give you some information that'd be just relevant enough but objectively not corresponding to you.
(let's say the website was compusa.com) ... My phone number (why the hell do you need it ?) is blah (real one). my Family name is blahh (real one too) and my first name is Hiroyoshi.
(click on submit)
(one week later, the phone rang)
-Allo ? Mr Hiroyoshi ? As a faithful client, we guess you could be interested in our offer : twenty four boxes of (put any soap brand here) for half price if you buy us ten rolls of toilet paper.
-So, compusa also sell toilet paper and soap ?
Anyway, my favourite one was with an old hotmail account that is now closed : a21z.
Before I ever use it publicly (on deja.com), this account got spammed.
The complete recipients list was readable.
To my surprise, all the email addresses (around 2 or 3 hundreds) were containing the string Aziz.
Ah ah ah ah ah ! I can't imagine they have some spams only aimed at guys called Aziz !!!
Conclusion:
Whatever information you give, they will guess the rest.
Maybe they'll just ask you elements that they already know in order to compare them.
don't forget to mail abuse@ and postmaster@ after each spam. I am currently writing a mailer that will do this automatically as well as blacklisting the spammers (not to download their mail from a pop server).
but that's just because it's interpreted.
I personally used a compiler for it.
I didn't know there also was an interpreter.
I also played with an MSDOS DiBOL compiler that worked pefectly. --
The title is an allusion to the game Wolfenstein 3D but I remember this excellent editor with its learning features.
I remember once having to modify a huge program (in DiBOL, a cool language, hybrid between Basic and C) and recording a small macro that did the whole thing instantaneously...
I also loved their terminal : conected to to servers at once, one could copy from one console to the other a very efficient nd intuitive way...
of course, now with X-like interface this sounds silly but then, years ago, it was revolutionary onan X-less machine.
God bless Digital:-) --
In June I bought a laptop.
No brand here. Some say it is a Gericom but I didn't buy it for this reason.
I bought it because all of its components were standard (and also because it was twice as less expensive as a Dell laptop):
PIII600
ATI Rage LT Pro
Maestro 2E
(and, BTW, a zone free) Toshiba DVD
Tulip compatible Network card
I installed OpenLinux 2.4 on it and I have to say that this works.
So, as I might expect most people here just spend more time choosing a laptop than a car, I am sure that having a dedicated Linux install for their laptop is not *that* crucial.
BCNU --
VMS was quite an outstanding OS.
OK, not really user friendly, but once mastered it really kicked ass and I have never seen a VAX hang nor being halted for any reason.
If VMS now evokes WNT (do a right-rot1 and you'll see) that inherited its kernel architecture, there is, IMHO, a system that obviously inherited its shell grammar from VMS : RiscOS.
As The StrongARM also inherited from the Alpha chip, it is obvious that Acorn Workstations were influenced by Digital (of course, this exageration is purely IMHO).
This is a good thing for them as Acorns are usually renowned for their ease of use.
At least one company understood Digital's radically new (in these times) technical approach and extended it to home computing.
BTW, a Unix freak with whom I worked on a VAX4000 had completely customized his shell to look like Unix's/bin/sh. It was credible.
Long live, Digital, you'll stay in my heart. --
This doesn't mean no tax at all.
And what makes Linux exciting to most if us is the DIY stuff involved. If MD really want to listen to the first generation of Linux users he should take this into account and then deliver OS-less laptops (servers, etc.) instead of ones with specific OS installed.
How much money is MD expecting to charge his customers for a Linux enabled laptop ?
Let's evaluate:
Internal R&D rentability, including eventual driver development and staff training
Technological survey and distribution optimization
possible prices raises on the Windows-powered side as Bill might raise his prices because of such a lack of fidelity. As MD didn't especially speak about a divorce, he might not want to lose its existing customers and then amort these raises by increasing the Linux machines prices.
Supplemental advertising
etc.
So, if you want my 0.01$ guess, I'd say that the Linux laptop might be as expensive as the NT/2000 or at least ME ones. --
``A quantum computer could eventually be used for practical purposes
such as database searches -- for example searching the Web could
be sped up a great deal -- but probably not for more mundane tasks
such as word processing,''
I really appreciate to see that, though quantum computers could help solving problems, they don't denigrate what came before this.
This will change from "fashion-effects" that make people forget what was sufficient until something new appeared. For example, look at how quick people got rid of the command line when the first GUIs appeared.
The first time I heard about a similar project, this was about an alternative to jail for non-dangerous convicts.
Do these guys consider that the mankind is a set of non-dangerous convicts ?
Last week we talked about Napster and about the coders' responsabilities in case their tools would be used for malicious purposes.
This week, we just (subliminally) suggest that according to the chaos theory (a butterfly wing's beat in Australia could cause a tornado in Arkansas three months later) we will just be trackable enough to get sentenced for such abuses (even if this is not obvious, this is gonna happen because these devices will show they full potential only when used alongside a lawyer).
When will the first humans pioneer another world? I give you my part of this one. --
[...] the fact that anyone can tweak the code--because it creates a situation in which an IT staffer may make changes that no one else knows about, and that probably go undocumented.
During the previous years, I worked for many *big* companies (the ones with ISO9xxx written on the business card) in which I usually observed the following scenario:
The chosen environment was HP-UX (or Solaris).
We had lots of problems with the servers and they got patched quite often.
Actually, the fact is that there many patches involved and:
they never got documented
the billing systems (or network management program) in development never got retested after each patch had been applied
So, OK, anybody can tweak Linux, but do they know that this occurs quite often ?
Executive should stop talking about things they don't know.
Linux is not more dangerous as another Unix. What about kernel parameters tuning under HP-UX ?
Has anybody ever seen them documented after each modification ?
Tsssk.
--
And what about the 4004 and the 8008? Intel produced these as well, before all of the ones on your list.
I don't have enough figures about these. Do you ?
And the 80186 was used quite a bit, there were Research Machines (UK Education Computer) that had it, and quite a lot of ol' hard disk controllers used to use it.
Does it mean these were superiorly powerful ?
Like all the Intel chips, these have been (relatively ) widely used. This is a question of marketing, not of performances.
IMHO a very good Intel proc was the i860, the one that powered the NeXTdimension card so that it could perform complex operations in color using Display PostScript in real time (I made the tests of zooming details captured in real time from a handycam using this device.).
Now, the most advanced processor that Intel provides is the StrongARM. It is also the simplest but it is still far away the ARM10. --
Ultimately, I don't think that a subscription model will work for unsigned/unknown bands.
Of course, subscription would only concern access to notorious artists' works, like Courtney Love or any other that escaped a vampiring contract.
I bet this system could also represent a viable opportunity for them. --
OK, just a remark:
You can't have a company managing it.
A company is seeking profit that it'll even take from the artist' revenue.
If the goal is to deliver art that'd directly benefit its creators, then the system has to be managed by a non-profit organization. --
Intel successively made the following (reads like a new dance) :
8086 (16bit) - technological advance
8088 (8bit) - technological step backward
80186 that nobody remembers - technological "sur place"
286 - technological advance
386 DX - technological advance
386 SX - technological step backward
486 DX - technological advance
486 DX - technological step backward
Pentium 60-66-90 - aborted technological advance (its bugs make me think of a publicly available prototype)
Pentium 75-100-133 - small technological advance
Pentium Pro - technological advance
Pentium II - technological step backward (It was intended to be 16bit OS -aka Win9x- compatible which the PPro wasn't;
What made the PII look faster than the PPro was SDRAM, period.)
MMX - small technological advance
PIII - technological step backward
PIV - technological step backward
IA64 - technological advance
OK, now, you might ask yourselves why I consider some step as a technological advance or not ?
Look at the Power/Frequency figures.
The drops they encountered were even so obvious between the PPro and the PII that Intel just changed its iComp index meanwhile, hence the iComp 2 (R)(TM) and soon the iCompIII (R)(TM).
Now because of complexity, the only way they have to make a CPU quicker is to increase its clock frequency. But, we have to be honest. Their efficiency slowly diminish as there are more and more units intervening in their processings.
Today, Intel promises a 1.4GHz chip which performances could be reached at home by overclocking some liquid-nitrogen-cooled older Pentium.
Even when I try to believe they are sincere and they technically trust their products' advance, their are still these details like the *quite* recent announcement of the VIA chip, faster AMDs, Faster G4, etc.
Come on Intel. Years ago, you really happened to introduce new, twice-as-fast-as-the-previous chips on the market. Now, you just wait for somebody around you to announce a product to announce something supposedly (a little) faster that takes time to reach the market because of produciton problems.
I suggest we just publish actual products availability announces on/.
--
Slashdot Mirror
--
Now that we can have Linux or BSD used as both Netware, TCP/IP, Web, RealAudio, AppleTalk, Samba, etc. servers, how could one OS that is not, at this moment, guaranteed to work as well as the Linux/BSD things be successfull ?
Netware has indeed a great reputation but convincing people to switch to it and thus lose the extra protocol/services they would have under another already available Free OS sounds risky, IMHO...
Has there been a "market-pemetration" study ?
--
I don't think this is fully real-time yet.
I mean I expected some cybernanny-like program that could just analyze the frames political correctness in real time and just erasing/modify "shocking" details.
I actually think a porno film viewed with that should be really funny.
By the way, it will be some time before they can accurately wash up the sound too (I don't mean "beeping").
But once they can do it, nobody will even be able to harangue the masses on TV without being potentially either censored, adapted, etc.
Frightening times, when themass-media are about to become even more powerful ever.
--
The first Network computers were produced by Acorn and were equiped with either a modem or a network card.
They were booting amazingly quickly, provided perfect television display (with the nicest anti-aliasing ever) and were damn quick at displaying HTML (NCFresco).
If you can still buy a cheap one on the Net, there are other alternatives still being produced and featuring lots of goodies like a RiscStation or some Oregan product.
The latter supports lots of features includinf Java, but no CSS, though.
--
What I see here is that this kind of debate is generating some stupid competition in which you have the technologicaly-happy (KDE) and the ethically-happy (Gnome).
IMHO, KDE is smoother and more complete than Gnome. Like it or not.
But now, if we just let people choose ONE solution instead of us then we might encounter a problem similar than the Windows one we just start to solve by bringing variety to the desktop market.
So ? What is the best UI ?
This is the one you'll take time to choose, not the one (whether goods or bad) that somebody will have decided that YOU will install on your Personal Computer.
--
I can suggest you 2 alternatives :
- Buy a second-hand Atari Portfolio
- Buy a Palm Pilot and replace all with LispMe
You see, the world just happens to be a bit more colorfull than your Black'n White manicheanism.--
They also seek handy phone numbers. : :-(
I just understood why
My collegues brand-new WAP handy just left him an SMS message : some kind of advertising for a WAP service, it seemed.
If the handy penetration rate is that huge, then it seems the'll touch even more people with SMSpam than with mail-spam.
Hence their need for loads of Handy#...
I happily don't have one, but having used mtnsms.com to send SMS messages to a friend, I am now afraid I may have unvoluntarily given his handy# to potential SMSpammers.
--
FinalScratch ;-)
Seriously, would Nerds attending a Debian party, use a commercial software on a commercial OS ?
--
I personally have hundreds of aliases that I give to new contacts.
I preferably use really stupid ones whenever I am not sure about my contact ; e.g. I sent one day mirko@garagiste.com to an inoffensive-looking web site while requesting information about data security.
You can't imagine how many sex spams I received under this alias.
Also, whenever requesting for documents to be sent through normal post, I usually give a fake first name (e.g. Baudoin, Ibrahim, Bill, etc.) which then allows me to track the spammers.
At the end, I just set some filters on the spammed accounts so that I can get rid of spams.
Now, if they want your personal data, you can consider they just want to know how they can reach you with public mean (email, mailbox, etc) and then give you some information that'd be just relevant enough but objectively not corresponding to you.
(let's say the website was compusa.com)
(click on submit)
(one week later, the phone rang)
-Allo ? Mr Hiroyoshi ? As a faithful client, we guess you could be interested in our offer : twenty four boxes of (put any soap brand here) for half price if you buy us ten rolls of toilet paper.
-So, compusa also sell toilet paper and soap ?
Anyway, my favourite one was with an old hotmail account that is now closed : a21z.
Before I ever use it publicly (on deja.com), this account got spammed.
The complete recipients list was readable.
To my surprise, all the email addresses (around 2 or 3 hundreds) were containing the string Aziz.
Ah ah ah ah ah ! I can't imagine they have some spams only aimed at guys called Aziz !!!
Conclusion:
--
but that's just because it's interpreted.
I personally used a compiler for it.
I didn't know there also was an interpreter.
I also played with an MSDOS DiBOL compiler that worked pefectly.
--
featuring Jon 'CowboyNeal' Pater scratching
Hope he'll use TerminatorX.
Try it or listen to this song's intro which was twiddled using it.
--
The title is an allusion to the game Wolfenstein 3D but I remember this excellent editor with its learning features. :-)
I remember once having to modify a huge program (in DiBOL, a cool language, hybrid between Basic and C) and recording a small macro that did the whole thing instantaneously...
I also loved their terminal : conected to to servers at once, one could copy from one console to the other a very efficient nd intuitive way... of course, now with X-like interface this sounds silly but then, years ago, it was revolutionary onan X-less machine.
God bless Digital
--
I bought it because all of its components were standard (and also because it was twice as less expensive as a Dell laptop)
- PIII600
- ATI Rage LT Pro
- Maestro 2E
- (and, BTW, a zone free) Toshiba DVD
- Tulip compatible Network card
I installed OpenLinux 2.4 on it and I have to say that this works.So, as I might expect most people here just spend more time choosing a laptop than a car, I am sure that having a dedicated Linux install for their laptop is not *that* crucial. BCNU
--
VMS was quite an outstanding OS. /bin/sh. It was credible.
OK, not really user friendly, but once mastered it really kicked ass and I have never seen a VAX hang nor being halted for any reason.
If VMS now evokes WNT (do a right-rot1 and you'll see) that inherited its kernel architecture, there is, IMHO, a system that obviously inherited its shell grammar from VMS : RiscOS.
As The StrongARM also inherited from the Alpha chip, it is obvious that Acorn Workstations were influenced by Digital (of course, this exageration is purely IMHO).
This is a good thing for them as Acorns are usually renowned for their ease of use.
At least one company understood Digital's radically new (in these times) technical approach and extended it to home computing.
BTW, a Unix freak with whom I worked on a VAX4000 had completely customized his shell to look like Unix's
Long live, Digital, you'll stay in my heart.
--
And what makes Linux exciting to most if us is the DIY stuff involved. If MD really want to listen to the first generation of Linux users he should take this into account and then deliver OS-less laptops (servers, etc.) instead of ones with specific OS installed.
How much money is MD expecting to charge his customers for a Linux enabled laptop ?
Let's evaluate
- Internal R&D rentability, including eventual driver development and staff training
- Technological survey and distribution optimization
- possible prices raises on the Windows-powered side as Bill might raise his prices because of such a lack of fidelity. As MD didn't especially speak about a divorce, he might not want to lose its existing customers and then amort these raises by increasing the Linux machines prices.
- Supplemental advertising
- etc.
So, if you want my 0.01$ guess, I'd say that the Linux laptop might be as expensive as the NT/2000 or at least ME ones.--
``A quantum computer could eventually be used for practical purposes such as database searches -- for example searching the Web could be sped up a great deal -- but probably not for more mundane tasks such as word processing,''
I really appreciate to see that, though quantum computers could help solving problems, they don't denigrate what came before this.
This will change from "fashion-effects" that make people forget what was sufficient until something new appeared. For example, look at how quick people got rid of the command line when the first GUIs appeared.
--
and I think we are now in new millenium :-)
Bye
Hey Marko!
Not before next year
--
How amazingly we see some "polemic people" using "polemic software"
- www.scientology.org is running
WebSitePro/2.5.4 on NT4 or Windows 98
- www.hitlerisgod.com is running Netscape-Enterprise/4.1 on Windows 2000
And also some weird surprises--
The first time I heard about a similar project, this was about an alternative to jail for non-dangerous convicts.
Do these guys consider that the mankind is a set of non-dangerous convicts ?
Last week we talked about Napster and about the coders' responsabilities in case their tools would be used for malicious purposes.
This week, we just (subliminally) suggest that according to the chaos theory (a butterfly wing's beat in Australia could cause a tornado in Arkansas three months later) we will just be trackable enough to get sentenced for such abuses (even if this is not obvious, this is gonna happen because these devices will show they full potential only when used alongside a lawyer).
When will the first humans pioneer another world?
I give you my part of this one.
--
During the previous years, I worked for many *big* companies (the ones with ISO9xxx written on the business card) in which I usually observed the following scenario
The chosen environment was HP-UX (or Solaris).
We had lots of problems with the servers and they got patched quite often.
Actually, the fact is that there many patches involved and
- they never got documented
- the billing systems (or network management program) in development never got retested after each patch had been applied
So, OK, anybody can tweak Linux, but do they know that this occurs quite often ?Executive should stop talking about things they don't know. Linux is not more dangerous as another Unix. What about kernel parameters tuning under HP-UX ? Has anybody ever seen them documented after each modification ?
Tsssk.
--
And what about the 4004 and the 8008? Intel produced these as well, before all of the ones on your list.
I don't have enough figures about these. Do you ?
And the 80186 was used quite a bit, there were Research Machines (UK Education Computer) that had it, and quite a lot of ol' hard disk controllers used to use it.
Does it mean these were superiorly powerful ?
Like all the Intel chips, these have been (relatively ) widely used. This is a question of marketing, not of performances.
IMHO a very good Intel proc was the i860, the one that powered the NeXTdimension card so that it could perform complex operations in color using Display PostScript in real time (I made the tests of zooming details captured in real time from a handycam using this device.).
Now, the most advanced processor that Intel provides is the StrongARM. It is also the simplest but it is still far away the ARM10.
--
Ultimately, I don't think that a subscription model will work for unsigned/unknown bands.
Of course, subscription would only concern access to notorious artists' works, like Courtney Love or any other that escaped a vampiring contract.
I bet this system could also represent a viable opportunity for them.
--
OK, just a remark :
You can't have a company managing it.
A company is seeking profit that it'll even take from the artist' revenue.
If the goal is to deliver art that'd directly benefit its creators, then the system has to be managed by a non-profit organization.
--
- 8086 (16bit) - technological advance
- 8088 (8bit) - technological step backward
- 80186 that nobody remembers - technological "sur place"
- 286 - technological advance
- 386 DX - technological advance
- 386 SX - technological step backward
- 486 DX - technological advance
- 486 DX - technological step backward
- Pentium 60-66-90 - aborted technological advance
- Pentium 75-100-133 - small technological advance
- Pentium Pro - technological advance
- Pentium II - technological step backward
;
- MMX - small technological advance
- PIII - technological step backward
- PIV - technological step backward
- IA64 - technological advance
OK, now, you might ask yourselves why I consider some step as a technological advance or not ?(its bugs make me think of a publicly available prototype)
(It was intended to be 16bit OS -aka Win9x- compatible which the PPro wasn't
What made the PII look faster than the PPro was SDRAM, period.)
Look at the Power/Frequency figures. The drops they encountered were even so obvious between the PPro and the PII that Intel just changed its iComp index meanwhile, hence the iComp 2 (R)(TM) and soon the iCompIII (R)(TM).
Now because of complexity, the only way they have to make a CPU quicker is to increase its clock frequency. But, we have to be honest. Their efficiency slowly diminish as there are more and more units intervening in their processings.
Today, Intel promises a 1.4GHz chip which performances could be reached at home by overclocking some liquid-nitrogen-cooled older Pentium.
Even when I try to believe they are sincere and they technically trust their products' advance, their are still these details like the *quite* recent announcement of the VIA chip, faster AMDs, Faster G4, etc.
Come on Intel. Years ago, you really happened to introduce new, twice-as-fast-as-the-previous chips on the market. Now, you just wait for somebody around you to announce a product to announce something supposedly (a little) faster that takes time to reach the market because of produciton problems.
I suggest we just publish actual products availability announces on
--
- You go on an MP3 site and they charge you, say...
- 5$ a month for limited downloads,
- 10$ for unlimited radio-like broadcasts (you are only allowed to make a selection amongst a selection to which you contribute by vote)
- or 50$ for unlimited downloads (whatever there is, you can accees it and download it).
- Regularly, statistics are gathered and artists get a percentage for what they got heard.
Of course,this is a draft so it might sound incomplete, so, instead of [flames ¦ moderation], juste contribute and suggest.Some remarks before I click the Submit button
--