I think you had to be there, before the time of Google and instant information, to truely appreciate the challenges and wonderful triumphs that were possible. And of course, being in a community with ONLY the top 1 or 2 million in intelligence was nice also. It was a magical time and now it's just noise. Sure there's some smart kids and I really like the whole "being nice is cool" thing, ala reddit, and etc. but I've seen it a million times: once everyone is doing it, it's not cool anymore. But I think this is a time when the roots of tech, the old timers, really need to step up and make sure this thing lasts in the true spirit of what we intended it to be. It truely is a new form of freedom, but it could easily be the makings of a new form of slavery as well. We need to remember that the net is about communitity, not a group of people or a city but this idea that everyone has something to contribute and that the easier it is to contribute, and the more that is contributed, be it good, bad, valuable or worthless, makes it more valuable. The fact that we are greater than the sum of our parts, really just bits of electricity in the world's largest circuit. Let's make sure that free flow is ALWAYS here.
In all seriousness, this is the last reactor story I'm going to read on slashdot. Because there's nothing I can do. Even if it explodes in a firey mushroom cloud and irradiates the U.S. from coast to coast, there's nothing I could do to prevent it. I assume that the world's experts in the nuclear business who likely have some investment in it's continued availability who are gathered there fixing it are competent and will resolve the situation as quickly and safely as possible. It's at times like this that the higher power such as God or whatever was invented. Sometimes you just have to trust others. Frankly, I don't want to read about it any more. I want to read about Linux.
What we need is a way for people to get the keys straight from each other without having intermediate signing authorities, as much as possible. Example, your bank most likely has a secure, brick and mortar branch in your town or near you. So, you could simply go to the branch office and they give you the cert and you install it on your browser, problem solved. The issue is that this is beyond most people's abilities. However, I posit that if you use something like a QR code or multiple QR codes to hold the cert, then people just shoot it with their phone and when they get back they plug their phone into their computer and it updates the certs.
Yep, another Apple, Inc. (no "Computer" in the name any more, they removed that) knob schlob on the front page. Gee, isn't Apple great. Hasn't 10 years been great for Apple? Boy, they sure are the dominant operating system NOW (no. they're still not.) Got news for you poster, having Apple still makes you part of the "Second Team" of journalists. Just do what the marketing tells you, you're doing fine.
Apple is in the middle of a classic bubble. Lots of stuff in 10.6 Server got broken and no word from Apple on the fixes. The only thing I use it for is AFP and to a lesser extent OD until I figure out how to replicate it in 389 or OpenLDAP. AFP is the only thing that really works as the Apple SMB client is broken on permissions. I'm being totally honest here, I really beleive that Apple's computer department is imploding on itself in favor of more profitable and easier to support consumer electronics.
France had economic reasons, they wanted to invest in a new source of goods they could traffic in Europe. It was pretty obvious that this new capital based economy was quite good. But 18th century Europe is pretty messed up. France, England, Germany, and Holland were all kindof under the control of just a few royal families all inbred to shit. So it might as well have been England helping us fight a war with England. Things are different today. U.S. is number one, we have a long way to fall. EU is right there, getting the oil from Libya. I don't see how a "democracy" (as if something like that can exist under any fundamentalist religion, be it islam, christianity or otherwise) is going to improve things other than "hey, they vote like we do now" (yeah, vote who their priest/ayatolla says to vote for). What about China? Uh, they aren't a democracy, but they all see happy. China wouldn't work with a democracy probably. And every country in Africa. Doesn't switzerland still have a king? I mean, it's not UN-NORMAL to not have a democracy. Democracies are in fact the abnormal thing. And frankly, there's lots of corruption in the U.S. as anyone outside of the U.S. will tell you.
I doubt it's really as bad as it seems. It's a fairly large area, it can't be totally covered in flying bullets and bombs. Of course, if the only picture you see is the one block where a few thousand people are fighting, it looks bad.
Uh, what if it's like he says and it's literally people attacking the order in the country? I mean, Gaddafi has really normalized relations with the west and become a fairly good player on the scene. He hasn't always been but I beleive the U.S. or at least George Bush has acted like they have normalized relations. I don't think what we want is more uncertainty in the region, especially with Iraq a huge vacuum right now. I mean, say armed milita people started attacking the White House and U.S. government properties? They would fight back, violently, and throw all the offenders in jail. This is what's happening there. Yes, they aren't a "democracy" but in Arab nations "democracy" means "theocracy" in a few years. You need a very heavy hand to keep the religious nutbags out of power. Religious nutbags that the U.S. essentially created in the 70's to cause trouble for the Soviets. And maybe it worked, but now there's another mess to clean up. At least someone like Gaddafi is not a blatantly militant shite but just a little nuts. I mean, he has an all-female bodyguard troop.and his own website algathafi.org. Sure, not a capitalist, and not an elected official but pretty tame by mideast standards in his more mature age.
There's not an infinite number of positions needed in the Unix world, because the computers do the work. We don't need more users. The users that we have do most of the real work in the computing world already. And, like I said, there's lots of entertainment and other home user things running linux. The idea that you need a user friendly "operating system" is really just a marketing idea created by Microsoft. The true purpose of an operating system is to provide reusable high-level functions and libraries. Unix already has every theoretically possible interprocess construct (messaging queues, timers, locks, etc) and every useful base function (copy, malloc, etc.). Unix is second to none in programmability. There is literally nothing you can't do. So it fulfills the need of an operating system as perfectly as possible.
The problem with your message, here, is that you are confusing "operating system" with "window system" or "desktop", which of course is not your fault because you've been taught that your little pictures on the screen are an "operating system" and not an application. But even the programmers that made windows consider those things an application. That's why you have (on Windows) an application called "Explorer.exe" and on Mac OSX "Finder.app". Of course there are some OS calls for displaying graphics but they are largely similar between different Windowing systems. Underneath it all, the developers making software for your machine are using... a command line.
The reason Microsoft is so "far ahead" in the market is because they were a monopoly that used heavy handed tactics to get it's product installed by default on almost every cloned PC out there, starting back during the command line days of dos.. Apple, well.. Apple is a hardware company. And Apple was almost dead about 12 years ago until Steve Jobs came back and brought with him NeXTstep (the new windowing system), which, on top of FreeBSD basically became OS X (after a lot of graphic design). You can see the same basis in GNUStep, minus the graphic design of course. But you see, Apple, the inventor of the consumer windowing system, couldn't survive without taking some open source stuff and pumping money into it to POLISH it. By the way, OS X didn't save Apple, the iPod did. What I'm saying is Microsoft cheated, and Apple stole to get where they are in the consumer desktop market.
Now, of course, they have the public trained and brainwashed to use their product not unlike the car industry has you trained to use a steering "wheel" and three pedals in a certain order. And, since the majority of consumer grade applications that run in said windowing system are not able to run on the linux windowing system, well.. There you go. You're left with a chicken and egg scenario about who's going to make the jump to something new first. And if that thing doesn't have marketing and support behind it, consumers won't do it because they hate change. So Ubuntu had something going there, but then they pissed all over the community that really helped them get there. So no one likes them any more because they got a lot of free help and then decided to screw everyone else at some point.
Anyway, if you ask me, there's just no interest in the computer expert community of trying to build a new general purpose OS or windowing system that runs on it when there are real problems to be solved. It's just not that interesting to see how much you can dumb down the essence of a computer so the general public finds it useful. And when I'm doing general public stuff, I use windows at home and a mac at work. But I use all the linux systems that come out and it's really not any harder than windows, it's just more powerful and therefore most confusing to the novice. Sort of liek the difference between you getting into your father's camry and then a fighter jet. It's not ever going to be possible to make the fighter jet as easy as the Camry. It's a tool for professionals. But, I do
Progress, in your sense of the word, means "making it easy for dumb people". Whereas progress in my sense of the word means "making dumb people unnecessary." So, maybe you should stop blaming everyone else and start realizing that it's you that's not good enough for Unix, not the other way around! Unix is perfect. The community is solid. We don't need any more designers! We don't need more bloggers! We need real creations, automations, and real code and that's just not point and click stuff. Sorry, go study it for another year and your opinion WILL change. We don't want you right now (but please come again). Pft, also, I'd say there's been some progress when there's around 10-20 million linux phones, 50+ million linux routers, and most of the people using them don't even know they're running linux.
Also, read a probably 20 year old but insightful essay, by Neal Stephenson, which will open your eyes to actual purpose of an operating system, which is a library of common functions. Which, by the way, the most extensive of which in existence is GNU stuff, which was wrought and given away for free, often copied for commercial purposes. Because they can't do better for money. Oracle, uh, that's a fork of ingres isn't it?
Really, Microsoft has done more than any other company I can think of to actually create new stuff from scratch. Too bad it all duplicates functionality that's been in Unix for EVER, and less completely. But it is mostly original. Unfortunately, we can never know for sure since it's...a trade secret. Luckly, as you'll read in that story above, Operating systems are useless without extensive documentation of the functions they provide to the developer (not the end user). Unfortunately the best documentation is the source code, so you can actually see what it does, not what some writer says it does. But, Microsoft is getting better, and learning. I hear they even have a new "Command Line Only" installer for Server 2008, because (who would have thought this, I'm sure you're surprised) there's apparently no real point to having a big GUI running on a web server. Turns out a command line "mess" is the most efficient way to manage it. Weird. But true.
I have an Amazon Student Prime membership. I was excited I could cancel Netflix and save $9.99/month. Then I read your comment.
Seriously, I am starting to wonder what kind of deals these providers have with the movie distributors. Do they pay per view or is it a contracted rate or what? Because it doesn't seem like that big of a deal to stream video anymore. So, how soon before there's affiliate and branded commercial video streaming services available, where essentially you resell Amazon or Netflix services? How much can I get to refer new users? Because once they have the deal, especially if it's a fixed contract, they really pile on profits by getting more subscribers. And of course, do I get paid for each movie they watch after the fact or just the one I referred? Cause I'm picturing like a movie review site (lots do it better than netflix or amazon) that links directly to the movie, and that link is monetized. There is some little transaction being generated somewhere there when you view a movie, it's not just wide open. Maybe they are reselling the customer preferences to the distributors to help them decide better what movies to buy. Hmm, very interesting new developments. I always assumed netflix streaming was a pilot, for both them and the distributors. It's mostly old movies now, but lots of TV DVD's. I assumed that they would eventually release a live streaming service (Netflix Live or something) for big events. But I'm surprised to see Amazon offer it now because it's obvious there's money to be made there for both the classic movie distributors and online "specialists" like Amazon. Of course it's inevitable that either the movie distributors will dry up and blow away leaving amazon to buy movies straight from the studios (hopefully) or they will you know, do their whole copyright thing and continue to fleece us and provide inconvenient service, which of course leads to piracy, which leads to jail, which leads to the new war on drugs, the war on copyright infringement, which of course leads to massive government expansion in the military industrial sector at the benefit of a few shareholders in the movie business.
That "nonsense" is why Linux runs 89% of the web. Stallman and GNU made all this possible by being geniuses. Unix is about communication, community, sharing information. That's what makes it powerful, that's what makes COMPUTERS powerful, which is why more and more things either are looking like Unix (Windows) or are Unix (OSX, everything google runs as a service, everything amazon runs as a service, etc). No one complains about RedHat because they aren't a bunch of hipsters trying to be the next big thing and stick to the real side of Unix, which is stability and service to the computing community at large. RHEL6 is an amazing product. Yes, it doesn't have the bleeding edge kernel, but that's because what's the hurry? Let's focus on a broad based capital investment in the computing future and not jump on the latest bubbles and trends. Knowing my OS distro will not only be updated but supported with GOOD SUPPORT (from a real person) for 8 years but I also know that I have a distribution of known stable, known secure packages that are also good contributers to the community and adhere to all the standards such as file locations, etc. which are LIKE THAT FOR A REASON, and debated 100000 times before.
That being said, if it takes a commercial company to make a decent Unix desktop, Apple already won, so we should be trying to copy that. THAT being said, I do think Ubuntu has the easy install down, and spent some time to make their desktop nice. But just because you get a little success does not mean you have a right to start making big, un-thought-through changes in system land.
There's no real excuse for this anymore, other than the local carrier (verizon in this case) skimping on hardware. I mean how hard is it to stack a digital trunk? Not hard. But the problem is, like you say, 911 is for personal emergencies and people think they should call 911 in the event of widespread emergencies, which isn't going to help much. The emergency response system is not designed to handle massive events, it costs too much and it wouldn't add much value. In a widespread emergency, you might get help, but only if you're in a well equiped neighborhood. If you live in a poor neighborhood with low property taxes, they probably spend fairly little on fire and police. If you're in the country, you probably have 1 sheriff for a few hundred miles square. Private ambulance companies might think there's a market there or they might not. If not, you're going to be left without help for a while. So, obviously, you need to be able to take care of yourself to a certain extent. Most people in the country know this already and have a woodstove, wood, generator, well, etc. In the city you are part of the system where unfortunately the tax dollars aren't going to cover a hospital bed and fireman for every man, woman and child. Yes, the feds can come with FEMA, where they can basically bring that level of response to a small area, but it costs a ton and it's not something done lightly. Don't count on that for at least a few days. So, what can you do, if you live in an apartment in NYC? Well, you should keep a minimum level of supplies around, especially water. You should replace/rotate them once a year. You should have battery powered lighting equipment. And you should have sleeping bags.
Hey, Google has an R&D! And at Google you get to eat free food! And you get props if you make something cool! Maybe Sergey will let you post your HTML5 Pac Man to the front page! To remind everyone, especially the shareholders, that we're new money! Yeah, that'll pan out long term!
Having worked with IBM in the past, I agree, is what I'm saying. At Big Blue they all still wear suits and button up shirts though. And conduct themselves in a professional way. I think that's the thing about IBM I respect the most, they've been in business for over 100 years doing basically the same thing and they are consummate professionals. Building the engines that power the economies of the world. Google is just riding on their coat tails, economically speaking. If it wasn't for our massive consumption economy there wouldn't be a Google because there wouldn't be ads. But there would still be IBM because someone has to count the taxes or rations or whatever. That being said, I'm happy Google exists, it's just a different sort of game that I don't take that seriously as an intellectual with an understanding of the true impact of technology. And that's a lot more than market cap, flashy screens, consumers. It's the ability to help organize societies, capitalize on specialization, ensure resources are allocated quickly and efficiently. With REAL THINGS, not just web pages. Arguably these could be seen as tools of control, and in some sense they are, but it's essential to society as a whole to have some sort of structure that can guide us. And you don't think Google is controlling you when they decide what a "quality page" is? Or decide what's evil and what isn't for you? Googles, Apples, Microsofts have come and gone but big blue will always be there, no matter what. Oh, and Lehman Brothers. Hypocritical circular logic all in one post!
Yes, a very good point. AI doesn't need to be smarter than All People, only most people. And I think the brute force simulations of it are getting pretty close. Between AI simulations and robots (and all the acoutrements like sensor tech and such) we're rapidly being obsoleted. The question then is what next? Space?
Yeah, but equivalent to 240 ports of GbE. Or equivalent to an $870 24-port 1Gb. That's about the going rate for a decent L3 Gb switch, even HPs. And that's a lot of cables saved, lot of server NICs, etc. 10Gb is really the only way if you have dense stuff like blades or SAN nodes that can push a lot of bits. Obviously. But it's a little more expensive, but only a little. $8k is not really that much when you look at what 50 copies of windows is or *shudder* 50 new iMacs. If you're a medium-sized shop at a normal, non-communications company, that's not a lot for a core switch.
For the record, Optical will eventually be the future but the dammed connectors suck ass at the moment and optical kits are AMAZINGLY PROFITABLE FOR NETWORKING COMPANIES so I like my copper until they decide to sensically drop the optical prices.. Probably it'll take a mass market moment to bring optical out once and for all to the masses. Just like in the 90's when they started putting copper nics on motherboards and the prices plummeted.
Slashdot Mirror
So what's next? We got to go out and keep going. We have nothing to lose because we don't have anything.
I think you had to be there, before the time of Google and instant information, to truely appreciate the challenges and wonderful triumphs that were possible. And of course, being in a community with ONLY the top 1 or 2 million in intelligence was nice also. It was a magical time and now it's just noise. Sure there's some smart kids and I really like the whole "being nice is cool" thing, ala reddit, and etc. but I've seen it a million times: once everyone is doing it, it's not cool anymore. But I think this is a time when the roots of tech, the old timers, really need to step up and make sure this thing lasts in the true spirit of what we intended it to be. It truely is a new form of freedom, but it could easily be the makings of a new form of slavery as well. We need to remember that the net is about communitity, not a group of people or a city but this idea that everyone has something to contribute and that the easier it is to contribute, and the more that is contributed, be it good, bad, valuable or worthless, makes it more valuable. The fact that we are greater than the sum of our parts, really just bits of electricity in the world's largest circuit. Let's make sure that free flow is ALWAYS here.
Sir Branson: *waving excitedly* "Next stop, the CENTER of the EARTH!"
In all seriousness, this is the last reactor story I'm going to read on slashdot. Because there's nothing I can do. Even if it explodes in a firey mushroom cloud and irradiates the U.S. from coast to coast, there's nothing I could do to prevent it. I assume that the world's experts in the nuclear business who likely have some investment in it's continued availability who are gathered there fixing it are competent and will resolve the situation as quickly and safely as possible. It's at times like this that the higher power such as God or whatever was invented. Sometimes you just have to trust others. Frankly, I don't want to read about it any more. I want to read about Linux.
What we need is a way for people to get the keys straight from each other without having intermediate signing authorities, as much as possible. Example, your bank most likely has a secure, brick and mortar branch in your town or near you. So, you could simply go to the branch office and they give you the cert and you install it on your browser, problem solved. The issue is that this is beyond most people's abilities. However, I posit that if you use something like a QR code or multiple QR codes to hold the cert, then people just shoot it with their phone and when they get back they plug their phone into their computer and it updates the certs.
Yep, another Apple, Inc. (no "Computer" in the name any more, they removed that) knob schlob on the front page. Gee, isn't Apple great. Hasn't 10 years been great for Apple? Boy, they sure are the dominant operating system NOW (no. they're still not.) Got news for you poster, having Apple still makes you part of the "Second Team" of journalists. Just do what the marketing tells you, you're doing fine.
The moon is close to the earth right now and opposite the sun, which tends to stretch the Earth and increase the probability of plate slip.
Unfortunately, I made my comment, but I have no solution to the problem of fundamentalist religions attempting to control a democracy.
I know times are hard, but please donate to the EFF. Even $5. They send you an awesome bumper sticker and/or t-shirt.
Versions is volume shadow copy. I agree it's overdue. Also overdue is a real filesystem to replace HFS+
Apple is a hardware^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hconsumer electronics company. That is all.
Apple is in the middle of a classic bubble. Lots of stuff in 10.6 Server got broken and no word from Apple on the fixes. The only thing I use it for is AFP and to a lesser extent OD until I figure out how to replicate it in 389 or OpenLDAP. AFP is the only thing that really works as the Apple SMB client is broken on permissions. I'm being totally honest here, I really beleive that Apple's computer department is imploding on itself in favor of more profitable and easier to support consumer electronics.
France had economic reasons, they wanted to invest in a new source of goods they could traffic in Europe. It was pretty obvious that this new capital based economy was quite good. But 18th century Europe is pretty messed up. France, England, Germany, and Holland were all kindof under the control of just a few royal families all inbred to shit. So it might as well have been England helping us fight a war with England. Things are different today. U.S. is number one, we have a long way to fall. EU is right there, getting the oil from Libya. I don't see how a "democracy" (as if something like that can exist under any fundamentalist religion, be it islam, christianity or otherwise) is going to improve things other than "hey, they vote like we do now" (yeah, vote who their priest/ayatolla says to vote for). What about China? Uh, they aren't a democracy, but they all see happy. China wouldn't work with a democracy probably. And every country in Africa. Doesn't switzerland still have a king? I mean, it's not UN-NORMAL to not have a democracy. Democracies are in fact the abnormal thing. And frankly, there's lots of corruption in the U.S. as anyone outside of the U.S. will tell you.
I doubt it's really as bad as it seems. It's a fairly large area, it can't be totally covered in flying bullets and bombs. Of course, if the only picture you see is the one block where a few thousand people are fighting, it looks bad.
Uh, what if it's like he says and it's literally people attacking the order in the country? I mean, Gaddafi has really normalized relations with the west and become a fairly good player on the scene. He hasn't always been but I beleive the U.S. or at least George Bush has acted like they have normalized relations. I don't think what we want is more uncertainty in the region, especially with Iraq a huge vacuum right now. I mean, say armed milita people started attacking the White House and U.S. government properties? They would fight back, violently, and throw all the offenders in jail. This is what's happening there. Yes, they aren't a "democracy" but in Arab nations "democracy" means "theocracy" in a few years. You need a very heavy hand to keep the religious nutbags out of power. Religious nutbags that the U.S. essentially created in the 70's to cause trouble for the Soviets. And maybe it worked, but now there's another mess to clean up. At least someone like Gaddafi is not a blatantly militant shite but just a little nuts. I mean, he has an all-female bodyguard troop.and his own website algathafi.org. Sure, not a capitalist, and not an elected official but pretty tame by mideast standards in his more mature age.
There's not an infinite number of positions needed in the Unix world, because the computers do the work. We don't need more users. The users that we have do most of the real work in the computing world already. And, like I said, there's lots of entertainment and other home user things running linux. The idea that you need a user friendly "operating system" is really just a marketing idea created by Microsoft. The true purpose of an operating system is to provide reusable high-level functions and libraries. Unix already has every theoretically possible interprocess construct (messaging queues, timers, locks, etc) and every useful base function (copy, malloc, etc.). Unix is second to none in programmability. There is literally nothing you can't do. So it fulfills the need of an operating system as perfectly as possible.
The problem with your message, here, is that you are confusing "operating system" with "window system" or "desktop", which of course is not your fault because you've been taught that your little pictures on the screen are an "operating system" and not an application. But even the programmers that made windows consider those things an application. That's why you have (on Windows) an application called "Explorer.exe" and on Mac OSX "Finder.app". Of course there are some OS calls for displaying graphics but they are largely similar between different Windowing systems. Underneath it all, the developers making software for your machine are using... a command line.
The reason Microsoft is so "far ahead" in the market is because they were a monopoly that used heavy handed tactics to get it's product installed by default on almost every cloned PC out there, starting back during the command line days of dos.. Apple, well.. Apple is a hardware company. And Apple was almost dead about 12 years ago until Steve Jobs came back and brought with him NeXTstep (the new windowing system), which, on top of FreeBSD basically became OS X (after a lot of graphic design). You can see the same basis in GNUStep, minus the graphic design of course. But you see, Apple, the inventor of the consumer windowing system, couldn't survive without taking some open source stuff and pumping money into it to POLISH it. By the way, OS X didn't save Apple, the iPod did. What I'm saying is Microsoft cheated, and Apple stole to get where they are in the consumer desktop market.
Now, of course, they have the public trained and brainwashed to use their product not unlike the car industry has you trained to use a steering "wheel" and three pedals in a certain order. And, since the majority of consumer grade applications that run in said windowing system are not able to run on the linux windowing system, well.. There you go. You're left with a chicken and egg scenario about who's going to make the jump to something new first. And if that thing doesn't have marketing and support behind it, consumers won't do it because they hate change. So Ubuntu had something going there, but then they pissed all over the community that really helped them get there. So no one likes them any more because they got a lot of free help and then decided to screw everyone else at some point.
Anyway, if you ask me, there's just no interest in the computer expert community of trying to build a new general purpose OS or windowing system that runs on it when there are real problems to be solved. It's just not that interesting to see how much you can dumb down the essence of a computer so the general public finds it useful. And when I'm doing general public stuff, I use windows at home and a mac at work. But I use all the linux systems that come out and it's really not any harder than windows, it's just more powerful and therefore most confusing to the novice. Sort of liek the difference between you getting into your father's camry and then a fighter jet. It's not ever going to be possible to make the fighter jet as easy as the Camry. It's a tool for professionals. But, I do
Progress, in your sense of the word, means "making it easy for dumb people". Whereas progress in my sense of the word means "making dumb people unnecessary." So, maybe you should stop blaming everyone else and start realizing that it's you that's not good enough for Unix, not the other way around! Unix is perfect. The community is solid. We don't need any more designers! We don't need more bloggers! We need real creations, automations, and real code and that's just not point and click stuff. Sorry, go study it for another year and your opinion WILL change. We don't want you right now (but please come again). Pft, also, I'd say there's been some progress when there's around 10-20 million linux phones, 50+ million linux routers, and most of the people using them don't even know they're running linux.
Also, read a probably 20 year old but insightful essay, by Neal Stephenson, which will open your eyes to actual purpose of an operating system, which is a library of common functions. Which, by the way, the most extensive of which in existence is GNU stuff, which was wrought and given away for free, often copied for commercial purposes. Because they can't do better for money. Oracle, uh, that's a fork of ingres isn't it?
Really, Microsoft has done more than any other company I can think of to actually create new stuff from scratch. Too bad it all duplicates functionality that's been in Unix for EVER, and less completely. But it is mostly original. Unfortunately, we can never know for sure since it's...a trade secret. Luckly, as you'll read in that story above, Operating systems are useless without extensive documentation of the functions they provide to the developer (not the end user). Unfortunately the best documentation is the source code, so you can actually see what it does, not what some writer says it does. But, Microsoft is getting better, and learning. I hear they even have a new "Command Line Only" installer for Server 2008, because (who would have thought this, I'm sure you're surprised) there's apparently no real point to having a big GUI running on a web server. Turns out a command line "mess" is the most efficient way to manage it. Weird. But true.
I have an Amazon Student Prime membership. I was excited I could cancel Netflix and save $9.99/month. Then I read your comment.
Seriously, I am starting to wonder what kind of deals these providers have with the movie distributors. Do they pay per view or is it a contracted rate or what? Because it doesn't seem like that big of a deal to stream video anymore. So, how soon before there's affiliate and branded commercial video streaming services available, where essentially you resell Amazon or Netflix services? How much can I get to refer new users? Because once they have the deal, especially if it's a fixed contract, they really pile on profits by getting more subscribers. And of course, do I get paid for each movie they watch after the fact or just the one I referred? Cause I'm picturing like a movie review site (lots do it better than netflix or amazon) that links directly to the movie, and that link is monetized. There is some little transaction being generated somewhere there when you view a movie, it's not just wide open. Maybe they are reselling the customer preferences to the distributors to help them decide better what movies to buy. Hmm, very interesting new developments. I always assumed netflix streaming was a pilot, for both them and the distributors. It's mostly old movies now, but lots of TV DVD's. I assumed that they would eventually release a live streaming service (Netflix Live or something) for big events. But I'm surprised to see Amazon offer it now because it's obvious there's money to be made there for both the classic movie distributors and online "specialists" like Amazon. Of course it's inevitable that either the movie distributors will dry up and blow away leaving amazon to buy movies straight from the studios (hopefully) or they will you know, do their whole copyright thing and continue to fleece us and provide inconvenient service, which of course leads to piracy, which leads to jail, which leads to the new war on drugs, the war on copyright infringement, which of course leads to massive government expansion in the military industrial sector at the benefit of a few shareholders in the movie business.
That "nonsense" is why Linux runs 89% of the web. Stallman and GNU made all this possible by being geniuses. Unix is about communication, community, sharing information. That's what makes it powerful, that's what makes COMPUTERS powerful, which is why more and more things either are looking like Unix (Windows) or are Unix (OSX, everything google runs as a service, everything amazon runs as a service, etc). No one complains about RedHat because they aren't a bunch of hipsters trying to be the next big thing and stick to the real side of Unix, which is stability and service to the computing community at large. RHEL6 is an amazing product. Yes, it doesn't have the bleeding edge kernel, but that's because what's the hurry? Let's focus on a broad based capital investment in the computing future and not jump on the latest bubbles and trends. Knowing my OS distro will not only be updated but supported with GOOD SUPPORT (from a real person) for 8 years but I also know that I have a distribution of known stable, known secure packages that are also good contributers to the community and adhere to all the standards such as file locations, etc. which are LIKE THAT FOR A REASON, and debated 100000 times before.
That being said, if it takes a commercial company to make a decent Unix desktop, Apple already won, so we should be trying to copy that. THAT being said, I do think Ubuntu has the easy install down, and spent some time to make their desktop nice. But just because you get a little success does not mean you have a right to start making big, un-thought-through changes in system land.
There's no real excuse for this anymore, other than the local carrier (verizon in this case) skimping on hardware. I mean how hard is it to stack a digital trunk? Not hard. But the problem is, like you say, 911 is for personal emergencies and people think they should call 911 in the event of widespread emergencies, which isn't going to help much. The emergency response system is not designed to handle massive events, it costs too much and it wouldn't add much value. In a widespread emergency, you might get help, but only if you're in a well equiped neighborhood. If you live in a poor neighborhood with low property taxes, they probably spend fairly little on fire and police. If you're in the country, you probably have 1 sheriff for a few hundred miles square. Private ambulance companies might think there's a market there or they might not. If not, you're going to be left without help for a while. So, obviously, you need to be able to take care of yourself to a certain extent. Most people in the country know this already and have a woodstove, wood, generator, well, etc. In the city you are part of the system where unfortunately the tax dollars aren't going to cover a hospital bed and fireman for every man, woman and child. Yes, the feds can come with FEMA, where they can basically bring that level of response to a small area, but it costs a ton and it's not something done lightly. Don't count on that for at least a few days. So, what can you do, if you live in an apartment in NYC? Well, you should keep a minimum level of supplies around, especially water. You should replace/rotate them once a year. You should have battery powered lighting equipment. And you should have sleeping bags.
911, Can you hear me now?
Fox lies, Fox lies, Fox lies
Hey, Google has an R&D! And at Google you get to eat free food! And you get props if you make something cool! Maybe Sergey will let you post your HTML5 Pac Man to the front page! To remind everyone, especially the shareholders, that we're new money! Yeah, that'll pan out long term!
Having worked with IBM in the past, I agree, is what I'm saying. At Big Blue they all still wear suits and button up shirts though. And conduct themselves in a professional way. I think that's the thing about IBM I respect the most, they've been in business for over 100 years doing basically the same thing and they are consummate professionals. Building the engines that power the economies of the world. Google is just riding on their coat tails, economically speaking. If it wasn't for our massive consumption economy there wouldn't be a Google because there wouldn't be ads. But there would still be IBM because someone has to count the taxes or rations or whatever. That being said, I'm happy Google exists, it's just a different sort of game that I don't take that seriously as an intellectual with an understanding of the true impact of technology. And that's a lot more than market cap, flashy screens, consumers. It's the ability to help organize societies, capitalize on specialization, ensure resources are allocated quickly and efficiently. With REAL THINGS, not just web pages. Arguably these could be seen as tools of control, and in some sense they are, but it's essential to society as a whole to have some sort of structure that can guide us. And you don't think Google is controlling you when they decide what a "quality page" is? Or decide what's evil and what isn't for you? Googles, Apples, Microsofts have come and gone but big blue will always be there, no matter what. Oh, and Lehman Brothers. Hypocritical circular logic all in one post!
Yes, a very good point. AI doesn't need to be smarter than All People, only most people. And I think the brute force simulations of it are getting pretty close. Between AI simulations and robots (and all the acoutrements like sensor tech and such) we're rapidly being obsoleted. The question then is what next? Space?
Yeah, but equivalent to 240 ports of GbE. Or equivalent to an $870 24-port 1Gb. That's about the going rate for a decent L3 Gb switch, even HPs. And that's a lot of cables saved, lot of server NICs, etc. 10Gb is really the only way if you have dense stuff like blades or SAN nodes that can push a lot of bits. Obviously. But it's a little more expensive, but only a little. $8k is not really that much when you look at what 50 copies of windows is or *shudder* 50 new iMacs. If you're a medium-sized shop at a normal, non-communications company, that's not a lot for a core switch.
For the record, Optical will eventually be the future but the dammed connectors suck ass at the moment and optical kits are AMAZINGLY PROFITABLE FOR NETWORKING COMPANIES so I like my copper until they decide to sensically drop the optical prices.. Probably it'll take a mass market moment to bring optical out once and for all to the masses. Just like in the 90's when they started putting copper nics on motherboards and the prices plummeted.